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Pink Floyd star funds homeless village
By Sophie Kirkham, Evening Standard Last updated at 00:00am on 20.05.03
Supporting the homeless: Dave Gilmour and his wife Polly Samson
He is one of Britain's greatest rock stars with a fortune of £75 million.
Now Dave Gilmour, guitarist with Pink Floyd, is using some of the proceeds from the house he sold to Earl Spencer to help London's homeless.
The £3.6 million is funding an "urban village" of 400 homes for down-and-outs and low-income workers in Liverpool Street. Overseeing the project is the homeless charity, Crisis.
Gilmour, 58, sold his three-storey home in Maida Vale to the brother of the late Princess of Wales in 2001 after buying it for a reported £300,000 20 years ago.
Father-of-eight Gilmour has become well known for his generosity in recent years, and has been linked to Crisis for the past 10 years. He has often spoken about the moral obligation of the very rich to give away part of their fortunes, urging fellow performers to put their hands in their pockets rather than ask others to pay through charity rock events.
The sum is the largest ever given to the charity, which relies entirely on donations for its work providing food and shelter for the homeless. In 2001 Crisis received gifts totalling £5.7 million.
The Liverpool Street plans are modelled on the conversion of New York's abandoned Times Square hotel which was transformed into a thriving community for the city's low-paid workers.
The London version will also house the elderly, mentally ill and recovering drug addicts and will provide training and education and limited health services.
The centre is hoped to inspire schemes across Britain. Gilmour is said to earn around £10 million a year from continuing sales of hit albums like The Wall (1979) and Dark Side of the Moon (1973).
He said he didn't need the money or the house when he spoke first about his plans. He said: "I just thought it would be a good thing to do. I had owned the house for 20 years and it made me a fat profit. I have scarcely used it in the last six or seven years.You can't seriously live in more than one house. Everything else is just a holiday home."
The rock star spends most of his time at his farmhouse in West Sussex, where he lives with his wife, the novelist Polly Samson.
