Gentrification

It occurred to me today that people think that council tenants or people that the council has a duty to house are being shipped out of the borough so that it can be gentrified. When the council claim they are trying to regenerate the borough without gentrifying it it is basically dismissed as a lie.

There's a video circulating under the caption "My town's regeneration doesn't include me" and/or "Losing My Home In The Name Of Regeneration". It's basically a lament that the subject and other people in similar to him are being squeezed out. He accepts the regeneration but doesn't accept the effect it is having / will have on him and others like him.

But if we look at the factors affecting this situation, we see something slightly - perhaps subtly - different.

(1) The high cost of housing in London (and the south-east).
(2) The massive decrease in government grants to councils
(3) The general government policy in favour of home ownership and against renting - includes Right to Buy policy
(4) As part of 2 and 3, loss of budget for councils to provide social housing
(5) The need to regenerate certain areas including council estates
(6) The council policy of blind tenure - it is impossible to tell a council tenant's property from any other just by looking at it. This should reduce stigma and enable developments to have mixed tenures. Council estates have not been a success socially.

Councils are simply not in a position to regenerate large areas and large amounts of their housing stock in such a way that low income people can afford to remain, but they can't just stand by and let areas / properties go to rack and ruin while they wait indefinitely for the housing "market" to regain some level of sanity.

Do people have an inalienable right to live in an area of their choosing, even if they can't afford to? Yes of course it's upsetting / hard to have to move away from friends and family, but is the council in a position to prevent that and if it is, should it? No-one in the private sector expects to be treated like that.

The economics of housing are harsh, if not inhumane, but should regeneration be put on hold just because housing renewal doesn't directly benefit everyone?


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