Speaking at the Guardian newspaper's key-worker conference on Tuesday, Livingstone said: "There is major potential to build homes – especially affordable homes – on and around rail and Tube stations.
"Half of London's Underground stations are to be improved in the next 10 years, so it makes sense to get as much housing built as part of this as possible."
Plans are already quite advanced to use what he called the "ridiculous wasted space" around Bermondsey Station in south-east London.
Other stations that will be targeted for work to begin in the next 12 months include Vauxhall in the south of the city, Edgware Road in central London and Holloway Road in the north.
The GLA is discussing a similar idea with Network Rail, which owns the overground train stations, and train-operating companies such as South Central .
Livingstone's special adviser Neale Coleman said: "We are still at the very early stage of this just now, so we have no figures in terms of how many homes could be built on some of these sites, but it will certainly run to thousands of affordable homes."
Coleman explained that the initiative had been in the pipeline since the ownership of the Underground stations and tracks passed from the government to Transport for London, a branch of the GLA, in July last year.
He added that housing associations would be obvious partners for the scheme and invited suggestions from the sector.
Dino Patel, policy officer at the London Housing Federation, said: "Anything that adds to the stock of affordable housing is welcome, particularly in areas such as transport nodes where infrastructure already exists.
"But we need to make sure there is a range of household types, including homes for families, not single-tenure developments."
Norris has pledged to cut the London Plan target of 50% affordable housing on new developments to 35%.
Source
Housing Today
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