What was claimed
Arsenal player Declan Rice has donated a $14 million bonus and sponsorship earnings to support a new initiative providing housing for homeless families with children in Tower Hamlets.
Our verdict
This isn’t true. Tower Hamlets Council has said it is “fake news”. There’s no evidence that Declan Rice has donated any money to such a scheme.
A false claim that Arsenal footballer Declan Rice has donated millions to a London council’s housing project has been shared thousands of times online.
Posts making similar versions of the claim have been circulating on Facebook and Threads, with one—which has 141,000 reactions and more than 4,400 shares—saying he has donated his “entire $14 million in bonus and sponsorship earnings to support a new initiative providing housing for homeless families with children in Tower Hamlets, London” which will help fund “140 transitional housing units and 220 shelter beds for parents and kids in need”.
It also features a quote attributed to the footballer, and links to what appears to be a news story about the donation (which would be around £10.4 million in UK currency), which it says is for an initiative called “Home Again”.
The website quotes a Tower Hamlets councillor called “Amina Rahman”, but there is no councillor of this name serving in the borough. And although there are councillors called Amin Rahman and Amina Ali, we could find no credible record of them ever having made the comments.
It also cites the presenter and former footballer Gary Lineker on X (formerly Twitter) praising Mr Rice’s generosity and describing him as a “hero”, but again we could find no evidence that he ever said this.
And Tower Hamlets Council told Full Fact that the story is “fake news”. The Big Issue reported that Arsenal had also confirmed the story was not true. Full Fact has contacted the club for comment.
A spokesperson added that while they do invest in temporary accommodation and work with partners to provide shelter accommodation to people who are rough sleeping, “this is not a new project” and they do not operate any scheme called “Home Again”.
There is also no other reporting of the donation in mainstream media outlets.
In at least one version of the post, Mr Rice is referred to mistakenly as “Freeman”. This may be a sign that similar posts about the baseball star Freddie Freeman have been adapted and used in the UK.
Before sharing posts like this that you see on social media, first consider whether it comes from a trustworthy and reliable source. Our Full Fact toolkit can help you weed out bad information you may come across online.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because Tower Hamlets Council, the supposed beneficiary of the donation, has confirmed this is “fake news”.
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