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Imagine you're a British hedge funder and you want to build is a simple mansion with an indoor swimming pool, gym, home cinema and climbing wall.
But the local authorities require a concession. To get permission you have to build low-cost housing for the poor. The cost: $745,000.
That's what happened to Chris Rokos, senior partner at Brevan Howard Asset Management, who bought a run-down, four-story hotel in Kensington for £18 million ($26 million), according to London's Telegraph. Two years ago, he proposed turning it into an eight-bedroom home with those aforementioned features.
The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea accepted the plan with the condition that he contribute £500,000 toward low-income housing.
Such offsets are often required for commercial projects in the area, apparently, and the Rokos house was so big it fell into the commercial category. Mr. Rokos didn't return a phone call seeking comment. A spokesman for Mr. Rokos declined comment in the Telegraph piece.
This would never stand in the U.S. If a hedge funder wanted to build a 30,000-square-foot home with an ice rink, that's his business. As for low-income housing in Greenwich, well, that's the government's problem. But in an age when the wealthy are getting excoriated, imagine how offsets could cause great PR -- say a 250-foot yacht buyer being asked to provide 300 aluminum row boats to inner-city children in Oakland.
