How we think about Brutalism and social housing is changing, but this isn’t helping the homeless

Adverts at tube stations in London are promoting walking along the eastern section of the Thames as a fun family day out for middle-class Londoners. This only shows how much the area, or at least our perception of it, has changed. There was a time when walking near the estates of far East London would be described as the opposite of a fun, family day out. The place was thought of as more La Haine and less like the Cotswolds.

The area is dominated by the notorious Thamesmead estate. When people think of this vast area, which was mainly social housing when it was constructed, they’re probably thinking of the Thamesmead South terraces that formed the original development and consist mainly of Brutalist concrete buildings. These were constructed as part of the post-war social housing boom.

Fun, stimulating and culturally enriching

Thamesmead became a byword for all the problems associated with both Brutalism as an architectural style and post-war social housing development as a political project. The name is a synecdoche for alienation, deprivation, crime, bad design and remote overbearing local authorities filled with middle class do-gooders deciding what sort of dysfunctional but artistically innovative housing it’s best that poor people have, before retiring to their tasteful Georgian or Victorian townhouses.

Stanley Kubrick filmed A Clockwork Orange there, which encapsulates both how it was thought of in the 1970s and how it has been thought of ever since. When we say Brutalism, Thamesmead is often what we are thinking about.

Today, however, our perception of this much maligned architectural style is changing. Even to the point where middle-class people are being encouraged to take their family for a lovely walk down to one of the most famous - or infamous - Brutalist sites as part of a fun, stimulating and culturally enriching day out. Way better than plonking the kids in front of Amazon Prime all day.

A crime against art and heritage

The changing perception of this area of London is not the only example of how Brutalism’s status is changing. Balfron Tower in Poplar - that’s East London for those of you not fortunate enough to live in the world’s greatest city - is being redeveloped as luxury flats after the social housing tenants were moved out. This building, and its associated other buildings in London, was once so hated that Iain Fleming named the villain in his novel Goldfinger after its designer, Ernő Goldfinger.

It’s worthy of note that Goldfinger's house in Hampstead is now a museum containing his art collection and his other buildings, such as Trellick Tower North Kensington and Metro Central Heights (aka Alexander Fleming House) in Elephant and Castle, are now desirable places for the artistically enlightened and tasteful set to live in. Y’know, the set that has poured scorn on Brutalism as an architectural style for decades.

This is not the first time our perception of an architectural style has changed over time. Victorian Gothic Revival buildings such as The Palace of Westminster and St Pancras Hotel were disliked when they were built, but are now beloved national treasures and icons of London. The fact that many iconic Victorian Gothic buildings were pulled down is now seen as a crime against art and heritage.

From Ronan Point to Byker Grove

The mythical person in the street’s dislike of the aesthetics of Brutalism is difficult to disentangle from the public perception of the failures of the post-war social housing projects. A dislike of the avant-garde use of concrete is often combined with a negative perception of local authority housing, but this lazy stereotype overlooks the fact that many of the worst or most infamous failures of post-war social housing weren't Brutalist buildings.

Brutalism, where concrete is typically poured on site for a more sculptural effect, is often confused with system built buildings, where prefab panels are made in factories to be assembled on site. The two styles of construction are similar, but crucially different. Brutalist buildings are much rarer, but why should facts prevent the development of a popular prejudice?

Ronan Point wasn’t a Brutalist building, whereas the desirable and thoroughly middle-class Barbican is a Brutalist building(s) and doesn’t generate the same ire. The popular dislike of social housing also overlooks the fact that a lot of the surviving post-war social housing estates, most of them privatised in the 1980s, are now desirable places to live, like Byker Wall in Newcastle (yes, site of the infamous grove) or the Alexandra Road Estate in London.

An age of rising homelessness and increasing insecurity

We can also question the degree to which the post-war housing project was a failure. Everyone hates tower blocks, the symbols of deprivation and neglect, where councils moved all their problem tenants to be forgotten, but this was a side effect of an ambition to house everyone. There were notable failures, such as Thamesmead, but this ambition to provide everyone a home is better than the free market, let everyone fend for themselves, devil take the hindmost, attitude of the 1980s onwards.

In an age of rising homelessness and increasing insecurity for private renters, we are rethinking this noble project to make sure that everyone has a secure home if they can’t afford to buy a property. In this light, how we think about post-war social housing is changing, from thinking of it as authoritarian, disconnected from the needs of everyday people and poorly executed, to thinking of it as compassionate, paternalistic, grand in scale and optimistic in outlook.

Centre Point reborn

Thamesmead is becoming an increasingly desirable place to live, which might have astonished Stanley Kubrick, if he was alive today. The Peabody housing association is expanding the range of homes that are available there and the buildings added to the estate have been well received.

This is also true of another of London’s Brutalist icons, Centre Point. This huge sculpted concrete tower sits on top of Tottenham Court Road tube station and is a symbolic (although certainly not geographical) centrepiece for London. This former social housing tower block has been refurbished and turned into new luxury flats, which are being sold to overseas property investors for huge sums of money. As we rethink the merits of Brutalist architecture and social housing, housing for the poor is becoming an investment for the rich.

Although, it turns out these luxury flats aren’t selling well. They might be overpriced or the turmoil in the global financial market following the pandemic might be making the buyers, who have these vast sums of money, nervous. The poor selling hasn’t stopped the flats being marketed as a cool, modern, urban, desirable place to live, which is not something we typically associate with Brutalism.

From Victorian Gothic to Brutalism

A pattern has been established: a formerly hated Brutalist building has become an iconic part of London, which means it's being sold to foreign billionaires to bring in money. This has happened to Centre Point, Balfron Tower and is probably the future for Metro Central Heights at some point, as it’s in zone one. Ugly concrete is now trendy urban living.

This happened to the Victorian Gothic buildings before. Buildings like St Pancras Station or the revamped Palace of Westminster were hated when they were built and described as “Gothic monstrosities” but are now icons of London. The hotel on top of St Pancras Station, once slated for demolition, most likely to be replaced by something similar to the current Euston Station, is now a luxury hotel for the well to do. The building has gone from hated to loved; from eyesore to serious money maker.

Revaluating Brutalism

We are reevaluating how we see the political and architectural projects of the past, such as Brutalist post-war social housing. This reflects a broader psychological change in society. After years of austerity and now a cost-of-living crisis, the idea that the state should provide things like safe and affordable housing for all its citizens has new credence. What is needed is for politicians on the left to pick up the desire and turn it into action.

It’s good that we are re-considering these often maligned buildings, but it does mean that they have become desirable places for billionaires to park their wealth. Changes in opinion can drive a revaluation, which in turn can change tastes more widely, but this has so far only resulted in the architecture now being cool and thus increasing the value of the properties within these buildings.

We are living through an age where huge numbers of people are homeless, and many more are living in insecure substandard housing. If we are going to change how we think about architectural projects that were previously thought of as failures, then maybe we should look at the philosophy behind them and what their creators were hoping to achieve, i.e. a secure and affordable home for all. Better housing is needed by lots of people and if these people’s housing situation can be improved, then this is the best outcome of the ongoing shift in architectural taste.

"Balfron Tower" by LoopZilla is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

On the anniversary of the Addison Act it’s important to remember the origins of council housing

Many people have a grim view of council housing. They think it’s a poverty trap, organised into crime ridden sink estates, where the very fabric of society has broken down. In their minds they see modernist monstrosities of concrete piled on top of concrete, which resemble the grim fantasies of totalitarian leaders and busybody social engineers; cramped, poorly maintained battery farms for humans that are freezing in winter and boiling in summer. They think of the worst excesses of a government that thinks it knows better than its people how they should live.

This vision, carefully built up over decades, has allowed the vital safety net of council housing to be dismantled. It makes me very sad that because of these blanket assumptions about council housing, many people today lead lives far more precarious than they need to.

To counter this narrative, it's worth thinking about the origins of council housing. Today is the 100th anniversary of the passing of the 1919 Housing and Town Planning Act, better known as the Addison Act, after the Minister for Health Dr Christopher Addison. The Addison Act was the groundbreaking piece of legislation that laid the way for what became known as council housing.  

The Addison Act provided subsidies for local authorities to build 500,000 new homes; although only 213,000 were built. The act required that councils assess their housing need and plan to meet these needs.

In the interwar perioid 1.1 million council homes were built. They replaced Victorian slums that had grown up as the population of cities had exploded in the 19th century. These were sites of terrible poverty, lack of sanitation and overcrowding. Council housing vastly improved the living conditions of the poorest in society and provided a safety net against people being exploited by slum landlords.

More than poverty relief

Council housing was more than just poverty relief. It was housing that was provided for anyone who needed it. It was good quality, at least by the standards of the time, provided on mass with secure tenures for residents. These homes were a universal provision, like health became after the founding of the NHS. Council housing laid down the basic idea at the core of the welfare state. Huge estates like Wythenhsawe in Manchester were built to provide housing for thousands of people. This showed that mass provision of services by the state was possible, before we had the post-war consensus.

Some of them had excellent designs and pushed the art of architecture forwards. Such as Erno Goldfinger’s Balfron Tower in Poplar, East London. Councils employed top architects and their commissions were sort after. The best architects of the time wanted to put their talents to work on the huge canvases that council housing offered.

Obviously, there were problems with some council estates. Goldfinger’s Terllick Tower, his larger follow up to Balfron Tower in Kensal Green, West London became known as the “Tower of Terror”, synonymous with crime, drug addiction and social decay. The causes of the social problems on some estates are complex and beyond the scope of this article, but it’s undeniable that there were problems.

Some estates were built with the best of intentions, but were flawed. The lack of external doors on Robin Hood Gardens in Poplar, meant that the only door to the outside world tenants had was the door to their flat. In theory this was a good idea as it mimicked the arrangement of the Victorian terraced houses the estate had replaced. The estate was also built with wide corridors so that if mums pushing prams stopped to chat they wouldn’t block access. However, the lack of external doors to the estate meant anyone could enter the estate and the vast corridors and stairwells quickly become convenient places to sell drugs.

Everyone should have a home

Although there were flaws in execution the idea of council housing was not flawed in principal. Everyone should have a home and the state should provide one to those who cannot access a good quality home through private markets. Council housing was more than just housing for those in desperate need or to avoid the exploration of the poorest. It was for everyone.

The crucial change came under Margent Thatcher. Her “right to buy” council house sell off was the largest privatization of her government. She also affected an ideological change that council houses were only for the poorest. They became much less appealing, as living in council housing was now a mark of poverty. It didn’t fit with the aspirational world view of the Thatcher government or the New Labour government, which did not invest in building enough new council housing to undo the damage of right to buy.

Neglect of council estates over the last three decades by Labour and Tory governments has made them worse and informed the negative view we have of council estates today. On the 100th anniversary of the Addison Act we should remember why council houses were built. Council housing shows that mass provision of housing by the state can improve people’s living conditions and give them more secure tenures. It also shows that mass provision, as opposed to means testing, is more effective in making a state service desirable and thus ensuring it continues to exist. This is an essential learning for the future of education and the NHS. 

Today we desperately need more council housing to guarantee a minimum standard of housing for those who are suffering with terrible living conditions in the private rental market. Years of insufficient numbers of council houses being built has led to too many people renting privately and more people living in terrible conditions because they can’t afford anything better.  

We also need to remember that fundamental to council housing is the idea of housing provision for all. The welfare state is there for everyone and it won’t be safe from those who want to dismantle it unless we embrace that concept.

"160920072485" by Paul-in-London is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Dispossession: The Great Social Housing Swindle

Look out your window. What do you see? I'll tell you: a housing crisis. Unless you're in the countryside, in which case you're probably looking at a nice field that will shortly become a site for shale gas exploration. As this blog is pretty metropolitan, I’ll assume that you're looking at houses.

Crucially, you are not looking at not enough houses. Not enough to meet the demand for accommodation. An Englishman's home is his castle, or so the saying goes. For this to be true castles would need to be redefined as mouldy bedsits that cost £700 a month to rent. We have a housing crisis, or a castle crisis if the saying is to be believed.

Whatever you call where you live (I go for Place de la Ball, but it's not catching on) it is becoming increasingly true that people with decent wages and money cannot afford to live in London or other big cities. We are, quite simply, not building enough houses.

Calls to tackle the problem of unaffordable homes have been getting louder for a while. Even the Daily Mail, the staunch defender of the property owner, is getting in on the act. However, we also have a crisis in social housing and this is less talked about. If you're struggling to pay for a bedsit in Tooting with your job as scrum manager and your landlord just raised the rent, then I feel for you mate. I really do. That's shit. However, we don't spend enough time talking about the housing that is supposed to be safety net for the less fortunate.

Since Margaret Thatcher's Right To Buy scheme in 1980, the social housing stock (mainly council housing, the homes owned directly by the government) has been run down. There is a massive shortage in housing generally but this more acutely felt in the social housing sector, which is supposed to provide for the poor, the disabled or those whose basic needs will not be met by the private rental market.

Houses prices are rising faster than my enthusiasm for a pub that just expanded its craft beer range, which means that the social housing stock is being run down. This is pushing more and more people into the private rental market and a lot of these people have basic needs that cannot be met at the price that the private rental market sets for accommodation. This is turn ultimately leads to the vulnerable being exploited.

A new film from director Paul Sng called Dispossession: the Great Social Housing Swindle, aims to shine a light on the current state of social housing. It is a powerful documentary that covers more than 30 years of history, politics and urbanism. Now, more than ever, this a topic that we need a public discussion about, so I urge you all to go and see this film.

The film examines the problems caused by the lack of social housing. It covers how the social housing stock has been run down as houses prices have grown. It looks at how people have lost of their homes or being priced out of accommodation that was supposed to provide for them for life. No one can claim to be human and not be moved by the plight of Beverley Robinson, who is refusing to leave her flat in the Aylesbury Estate in Walworth, London until the council offer her enough money to buy a home in the area. People like Beverley are the victims of the housing crisis.

The film shows specific examples of social housing, which was supposed to be set aside for the less well off, being taken away from the people who need in it. Not just Beverley in the Aylesbury Estate, but also residents of Balfron Tower, a brutalist marvel built by Erno Goldfinger, a Hungarian socialist who wanted to make housing for people with “deep roots in the immediate neighbourhood”. Sadly, middle class architecture enthusiasts who move to London to work, and live in East London (like me), are making Balfron Tower a fashionable place to live. This is leading to the people who should be living there; the people Goldfinger designed the building for, losing their homes.

When we talk about the housing crisis it is easy to focus on London, where price rises and austerity have taken a huge toll. However, we are in a grip of a national housing crisis with people in Birmingham, Liverpool and Newcastle unable to afford a place to live, while their neighbourhoods are colonised by people selling up in London. There is a social housing crisis across the land and Dispossession looks at estates such as St Ann’s in Nottingham, where residents have had to deal with the stigma associated with council housing for years. A stigma that is entirely false.

The film also looks at Glasgow and the huge privatisation of social housing that took place there. Between those exploited by rogue landlords and those who cannot afford to live in their home town, it is clear that the housing crisis is just as toxic in East Glasgow as it is in East London.

Dispossession talks to real people whose lives are affected by the social housing crisis and lets them tell their stories. This brings home the human side of an issue that can too often be dominated by discussion of policy on brown field land or relative house price inflation. Not that these things aren't important, but once you see the squalor that residents of Govanhill in Glasgow live in, you will feel compelled to act to help your fellow human beings.

Dispossession show the same pattern, being repeated across the country. Loss of social housing, through selling it off and bad deals that do not provide for the people who need it, and not enough new social housing being built. Across the country, people who want to stay in their homes cannot and vulnerable people are not having their basic needs met.

The conclusion from this is straightforward: the market mechanism for social housing cannot keep people in their homes meet their needs. We need more social housing. We need to stop the sale of the social housing that we have and we need to build more. Everyone has the right to a safe and secure home and should not lose it due a redevelopment deal or because rising house prices makes their central London plot incredibly desirable.

We cannot afford to overlook the problems of social housing when we tackle the housing crisis. The scrum manager struggling to make rent on his private rented bedsit in Tooting and Beverley, who risk being driven out of the Walworth area, are both victims of the same travesty. We need to know about each other's plight and work together to solve this problem so that everyone can have a safe and affordable home for life. This film is a critical step towards that.

If you want to see Dispossession: the Great Social Housing Swindle film screens across the country can be found here:

https://www.dispossessionfilm.com/

A huge bonfire of red tape

There are many things that make me angry about the Grenfell Fire and the tragic loss of life it caused. However, to find the thing that most stuck in my craw, we have to travel halfway round the world to Colorado. A short while ago, Slate's Political Gabfest podcast (which, is great and you should all listen to it ) did a special live episode with guest Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper. Practically the first thing out of the Governor’s mouth was a claim that no one defends red tape and that his administration was working hard to get rid of as many regulations as possible. He seemed pretty proud of that.

This may not be as overtly enraging as factors on that ground in the Grenfell Fire - the poor response from the council, Theresa May refusing to talk to homelessness families - but it speaks to some pretty lazy assumptions that we have been making for a long time. Assumptions that have probably cost more than 100 lives in this case.

The UK equivalent of Governor Hickenlooper’s railing against red tape is "health and safety gone mad". The idea that regulations aimed at preventing the place where your children sleep being turned into a 25 story pillar of flame are somehow stifling private business and preventing them from creating a bounty of wealth for all.

Former Prime Minister David Cameron, said he wanted to cut back the health and safety “monster”. This idea has a lot of credence in politics. Donald Trump promised a "bonfire of red tape" when he was running for President and the Daily Telegraph supported the idea. The Telegraph is currently running a campaign to cut EU red tape post Brexit.

Too many laws are holding back the natural British entrepreneurial spirit. The next Steve Jobs can't get his tech company off the ground because of all the rules about how much screen time employees are allowed without a break. For years this idea has been pushed to the point where lots of people say it without thinking about what it means. It has led to complete disdain for government and red tape, but these rules are here to keeps us alive.

Red tape must be got rid of to help businesses grow, that's the argument, and growing business is the most important thing that anyone can do. It's our highest and noblest calling, or so the argument goes. It is parroted by people like the Governor of Colorado who should have other priorities beyond growing business, like using government look after people and make their lives better.

Wait, doesn't growing business make people's lives better, I hear you say? The core of Governor Hickenlooper’s argument is that growing business employees more people and creates more wealth so that we can all live in lovely homes and raise healthy happy children and then retire to live near the seaside. Cut the red tape and the struggling Steve Jobs out there will make lots of wealth for everyone.

Except it doesn’t quite work like that, because the jobs created are insecure, low paid and sometimes dangerous because we just got rid of the red tape preventing that sort of thing. Cameron wanted to get rid of the health and safety culture to help business make jobs but almost all of the jobs created were low paid and insecure.

We have spent decades reducing red tape to allow business to grow, and where are we now? High unemployment, whole communities where there are very few jobs (have you been to Whitehaven recently?), stagnant wage growth, massive inequality between those owning/running the businesses and those working in them, job insecurity, people in work being more likely to be in poverty than anyone else and a huge increase in people relying on food banks. Helping business is not helping ordinary people.

None of the benefit of the getting rid of red tape goes to the people in the tower blocks or the food banks or the low paid insecure jobs. It goes to the landlords, the company owners and the people employing workers on low wages and insecure contracts. These people suffer the low wages, the insecure work, the housing crisis, the benefit cuts. They never get anything back, but the people who own the businesses get tax cuts and bonfires of red tape to make their lives easier.

Cutting red tape allowed for Grenfell Tower to be dangerously re-clad at the cheapest price, because cutting red tape is inherently good and not a penny more than necessary should be spent on the houses of poor people. They deserve it through not working hard, so the argument goes. This idea is not an 80s retro throwback; it is alive today in the benefit cap and the bedroom tax. It lives on in the Tories’ rhetoric of ‘strivers and skivers’.

The end goal of all this is to punish the poor for being poor. You might see the Tory prime ministers saying that The Grenfell Fire is a tragedy on TV, but her party caused this by perpetuating the idea that the poor deserve less because they are where they are through their own fault. Tories use their divisive rhetoric to turn workers against unemployed, low paid workers against the slightly better off, non-immigrants against immigrants. By positioning one side as undeserving and the Tories as the champions of the good, honest, hard-working people, they create the circumstances when the homes of poor people can be turned into a death trap.

Why should they get a safe home when I don’t get anything from the government? So the argument goes. Poor people are lazy and don’t deserve anything nice or safe. If they don't like it, work harder. This is the subtext and often the text of what the Tories say. Now people are dead because of the idea that poor people deserve as little as possible.

The assumptions that underpin a lot of our current economic and political thinking allowed the Grenfell Fire to happen. A lot of people have said how upset they are by this, but I bet they are still concerned about how much the government spends housing the poor. Either you’re on the side of a "healthy economy" (few subsidies to the poor and a good business climate with little red tape) or you’re on the side of protecting people's lives. I am on the side of looking after people, which means that business needs to move over.

The materials used in the Grenfell cladding failed safety tests. This shows we need more red tape to keep everyone safe. Everyone should be safe in their beds while they sleep, regardless of how much tax they pay or how many services they use or what job they have or how much they earn. Everyone. If people being safe while they sleep is a problem for business, then we have a problem with business. If red tape keeps people safe while they sleep then it is something we should be proud of and the Hickenloopers of this world should be ashamed of their desire to use public office to reckless endanger the public.

The Grenfell Fire is a tragedy and something needs to be done so that it never happens again. Even if people in business don’t like it. These people don’t care about our lives. At least they don't care about our lives as much as they care about making life easier for business, which from where I stand today has not led us to the shining corporate sponsor city on the hill that it was supposed to. It has made us less equal, more insecure and less safe.

I sincerely hope that Grenfell leads to a change in public opinion about the role of regulation in keeping people safe. Everyone's life is important and I want them to be bound up in red tape if that’s what it takes to protect them.

Grenfell Tower image created by ChiralJon and used under creative commons.

Who will take up the cause of the shat upon generation?

Sometimes as a millennial it can feel that the world is against you. It is often stated that we are likely to be the first generation who are worse off than our parents. Housing is prohibitively expensive, jobs are less secure and pay less, whatever future we have is likely to be blighted by environmental disasters, economic instability and decades of Tory rule.

Sometimes it feels as if the planet itself is trying to crush our generation. Then I realise that it is not the world that is against us, it is one group in particular: the baby boomers.

The baby boom generation is pretty open about its hostility to my generation. Hardly a day can go by without an opinion piece accusing my generation of being entitled and lazy. Entitled seems to mean having the chutzpah to demand an affordable place to live and a decent job. That must seem like an outrageous demand to a generation who grew up with full employment and readily available council housing.

I was 22 when the 2008 financial crash occurred. I don't remember there being many people my age making the top decisions in banks and government, taking liberal advantage of the revolving door between public and private sector, leveraging as much debt as possible then taking a sledgehammer to the global economy. I don't remember there being many people my age deciding to invade Iraq and creating the conditions for a medieval death cult to grow and spread terror all over the world.

From where I stand there is only one generation that felt entitled enough to act as if there was no consequences to their actions. They are not the generation that suffers the consequences of every bad decision of the last 15 years.

There weren't many people from my generation who made the decision to sell off our council houses and not replace them. Nor are there many people of my generation in government failing to do anything to tackle the housing crisis or running developer firms that sit on land to keep the value of the few properties they do build high. It wasn't our decision to let house building fall to the lowest point since the 1920s.

It is my generation sitting in unsafe, expensive rental accommodation with little rights, while the prospect of owning our own home moves away faster than a space shuttle taking off. Apparently we're a spoiled and entitled generation, but if baby boomers were forced to deal with the rental market as it currently stands, you can bet reform would be top of all partys’ agendas. Instead we get useless advice and contempt for our problems, such as claiming that the reason why we cannot afford a house is because we spend too much on avocado toast.

So who is going to take up the cause of the shat upon generation? There is a general election going on, which means that someone should at least pretend to care about us. Which party wants to correct this injustice? Not the Tory Party: the only contact their leaders have with young people are Young Tories, who wear suits and take briefcases to uni lectures. The sort of people who probably get central London flats as a first birthday present.

Labour under Jeremy Corbyn has a lot of support amongst younger people. Although baby boomer columnists are pretty keen to pour scorn on our desire for a politics that is not complete cynical, from the comfort of homes that they could afford on a journalist’s salary. That is when they’re not using said columns to tell other baby bombers that we’re entitled and deserve the shit we get.

Now 60% of people in poverty are working families, which creates the feeling that society consists of a large number of people working hard and impoverishing themselves for the benefit of a rich, older class who do not work and benefited from cheaper houses and better jobs (the former of which they hog and the latter of which they did their best to destroy).

Perhaps I am being too harsh on the baby boom generation. Obviously, no one should be forced out of their home. Although to act as if that is being suggested when any corrective to the current state of the housing market is proposed is pretty entitled. People are living longer and the number of older people is rising, which is one of the causes of the current pressures on welfare and the housing marketing.

The solution to this is to bring in more immigrants to readdress the worker to dependent ratio. However, the baby boom generation's reaction to all this was to vote overwhelming for Brexit, so I guess that solution is off the table for now.

If immigration must come down to appease baby boomers who, for some reason, feel threatened by hearing Polish spoken on their bus, but welfare benefits to older people (the triple-lock, fuel allowance, freedom passes, etc) must remain despite a falling percentage of the population who are workers and more workers being in poverty then ... well ... all I am saying is, that is pretty entitled. So entitled that I can't believe someone would suggest that in public without fear of being laughed at.

Yet that is the situation we find ourselves in. The baby boomers get what they want and then accuse us of being entitled when we ask for things like jobs and houses so that we can do things like work every hour that God sends to pay for the triple lock and find somewhere to raise the next generation who are likely to be even more shat upon.

I don't know about you, but I get a sense that society is run for the benefit of old people against the interests of working age or young people. From housing to Brexit, young people are being kicked by the most entitled generation in history. Their cultural concerns, such as immigration or Britain's role in the world, are given credence, miles of column space and are the focus of government policy, regardless of how stupid, short-sighted and ruinous their demands are.

Our concerns, such as housing, employment or the environment, are either ignored or openly mocked. Sometimes I think that my generation has a parasitic creature attached, which is sucking the life from us until we die and then it can move onto the next host (ie our children).

The latest outrageous instance of this? A column in Sky News where baby boomers literally say they want to beat us and then send us off for National Service? Let us remember that the baby boom generation not only got everything handed to them on a plate, but also didn't fight a war because to have served in World War 2 you would have to be at least 90, by now and people over 90 were only 0.9% of the population in 2015.

It is the generation that came after the war, who lived in the glow of the post-war consensus and then dismantled it and told those who came after that we should be grateful to live in this dystopian hell hole of a future, who are the real problem. Although, record numbers of young people are registering to vote, so maybe in this election, or a future election, the most entitled generation that ever existed will get a surprise from the hard working generation who pay for their luxury.

Avocado toast image created by T.Tseng and used under creative commons.

What is wrong with gentrification?

Last weekend a protest come street party descended on Brick Lane to protest against the gentrification of the area. Called the Fuck Parade and organised by anarchist group Class War, the crowd-funded protest turned its attention to the most obvious incarnation of the hipsterization of East London, the Cereal Killer. For those reading from outside London this is a cafe which only sells cereal.

Most people will instantly roll their eyes at the words "street party", "crowd-funding" and "anarchist group", then they will go back to eating their scrambled eggs with chorizo with all the superiority of a middle-class centrist. The more thoughtful individual will say that they may find the idea of a cafe that sells cereal for £4.40 a bowl slightly decadent but wider socio-economic problems cannot be blamed one group of people trying to earn a living. Protesting outside a small business a few streets away from the headquarters of RBS is choosing the wrong enemy if your goal really is "class war".

All this misses the point, which is that gentrification has done enormous damage to the communities of East London and the process shows no signs of stopping. You may disagree with the form the protest has taken but you cannot disagree with people wanting to express their anger at the way their communities have been hollowed out to make way for places which sell pulled pork and ever increasing numbers of luxury flats.

The process of gentrification drives people out of their homes by raising the rents in formerly affordable postcodes to astronomical levels. Through the same process, gentrification closes down small businesses. Just look at what has happened with the Brixton railway arches

Gentrification affects the poorest people in society. People who rent and cannot afford to get on the property ladder. These people are most affected by the rise in rents, especially at times when income has remained stagnant. Some of these people live in social housing, which mitigates some of the effect, but the depletion of the social housing stock has forced many of them into the private renting sector. Forced to move from affordable location to affordable location, the rising rents with gentrification means these people are running out of affordable places to live. These poor people have almost no one to speak for them and no means to signal their opposition to being priced out of their own homes.

Most of us see gentrification as positive thing. We say that this area used to be filled with betting shops and takeaways and now it has coffee shops and bars that sell craft lager from local breweries. There is an element of class snobbishness in this, it’s more middle class therefore it must be better. However is it what the people who live in the area there want? No one ever stops to ask them when the character of an area changes.

I live in Walthamstow where this process is thoroughly underway. In the three years I have lived here the places has changed almost beyond recognition. I admit that I am part of the problem, I was not born here and I like pulled pork and craft lager as much as the next iPhone owning middle-class lefty, but I can see another way of looking at gentrification. This area used to be filled with business local people could afford to use; now it is not. Pretty soon these people will leave because they cannot afford their rent and the middle-class colonisation of East London will march on.

What will happen when all the cleaners, carers and shop staff cannot afford to live anywhere in London? Do we want to send them all to Luton and then bus them in when needed? Is this the future for the poor people who need the jobs in London but cannot afford to live there? The problem of London's rising property prices is already spreading to the commuter belt. The future looks bleak for the urban poor in the South East.

So if gentrification is such a problem, why is nothing being done about it? For those who hold the majority of political power (the middle and upper classes), gentrification is seen as desirable. The more middle class an area becomes, the better it is. Capitalism will liberate the poor from their vulgar, misguided desires and deliver them to a more sophisticated world. It is just an unfortunate byproduct that this process also drives poor people of their homes.

Gentrification is also seen as desirable by the people who own property in an area. Again, generally these are the people who have more of a say in the political process. To challenge gentrification we need to challenge the idea that homes are financial assets and remind everyone that a home is a place to live. Economic security for the many is preferable than generating more wealth for the few.

We need to challenge the prevailing opinion that creating more wealth at the expense of communities and people's lives is a good thing. This cuts to the heart of how we see economics. Our society is becoming materially richer but emotionally poorer as all that has emotional value is swept away in favour what makes money. This is seen as a natural process, something we cannot control. Standing up to capitalism is like willing the Earth to stop turning.

Economic process are not inevitable and neither are they natural forces. They are the behaviour of people, and peoples’ behaviour has changed in the past and it will change in the future. This view, that forms and flows of capitalism is inevitable and beyond control is an ideological argument in favour of the status quo. It is an argument that benefits the people who already have wealth, who own property and who benefit from the constantly expanding reach of capitalism. Markets can be controlled, the process is not inevitable. To say otherwise is to support those who prosper from the process of gentrification at the expense of others.

Tackling the problems of gentrification cuts to the heart of how we see capitalism and society. What is seen as good in our society, or inevitable, is often what benefits the middle classes who hold all the political power. These assumptions need to be challenged if we are to stop the damage done to communities by gentrification.

Over the last few years economic growth has returned on the back of growing consumer debt and rapidly rising house prices. At the same time, the majority of people have had falling real wages, less stability in employment and rising costs of living. We have failed to build enough houses for sale and enough social housing, this has forced too many people into an overheated private rented sector and led to a housing crisis, which has affected the poorest the most. We could unlock brownfield land, build more houses, build taller to create more housing units, passes laws against land banking, tax under-occupied properties, pass laws to prevent the depletion of the social housing stock, build more social housing or taken any other number of steps to tackle the problems of gentrification, but there is no political will to do this.

There has been many polite requests to tackle the social problems of gentrification, from the poor and the middle class, this has led to nothing. The process marches invetiably on, people are still being driven from their homes by rising rents and local business are forced out in favour of places like Cereal Killer. This trend is not the fault of Cereal Killer’s owners nor is it the fault of those who sell pulled pork or craft lager, however society is sending clear message to the poor. “These things are wanted, you are not wanted here. Leave now. Any attempts to resist the invasion of our community will be severely dealt with.” No wonder people are angry.

Only the most selfish person would think that anarchist led riots are a sign of society functioning properly. Clearly there are problems of gentrification that need to be addressed, however, all forms of polite protest have been met with a shrug of the shoulder. So people have taken to the streets.

The problems of gentrification still damage people's lives and the process continues. Violence will follow unless we face the problem of the housing crisis and people being driven out of their community. It is not enough to dismiss this as inevitable or argue that it is desirable. We cannot allow the problem of gentrification to continue unchecked or else the form of protest that comes in the future will be much more destructive.

Our House

In the late 1940s, my grandparents moved into a brand new council house in Birmingham. I remember visiting it as a kid in the ‘eighties and Sheldon felt like a pretty run down area by then, but just after the war it was a desirable area. Semi detached and modern, with a garden at the back (albeit still with an outdoor toilet) it was a far cry from what working class people had experienced before the war – not enough housing, exploitative private landlords, and buildings rotting and crumbling even before the efforts of the Luftwaffe. With a Labour government in power, promising a new era of ‘cradle to the grave’ collectivism amid the rubble of the war, housing was firmly on the agenda.

The reason I’m telling you all this is because housing is as much a political issue today as it was when Attlee was prime minister. A serious lack of affordable housing for first time buyers, combined with the post-banking crisis difficulty in obtaining mortgages, means a generation of young people will find it near impossible to get on the property ladder. Meanwhile, councils and housing associations have been building little in the way of social housing, and the age old problems of ‘sink’ estates and poor quality rented accommodation are still very much with us. Politicians know it’s getting worse – the waiting list for council housing is 12% longer now than in the previous quarter. But how did we get into this mess, and what should we do about it?

The Attlee government worked quickly to build new, good quality council houses – the ‘homes fit for heroes’ promised, but never delivered, after the previous world war. The incoming Tory government of 1951 built even more. But this was in a very different context than today – the 1950s and 60s were the post war boom years, supported by full employment, and the role of the state could not be more different to today. It didn’t seem unusual to anyone, except a handful of marginalised right-wingers, that the state had a role in providing most of the basic provisions of life for the majority of people.

Then, somewhere along the line, it all went wrong. In the ‘60s, government strategy moved towards creating new estates on the edge of cities, using new-fangled ‘system building’ to create vast, Modernist tower blocks and flats. This was in keeping with the optimistic, forward looking spirit of the era – remember, this was the age of Wilson’s ‘white heat of technology’, when it was widely assumed that futuristic motorways would solve all our transport problems and new nuclear power plants would provide electricity too cheap to meter. Plus, system-building was cheap, and a booming population needed ever more homes. This disaster is well documented, but in brief, it condemned millions of people to being trapped in Eastern Block-like ‘slums in the sky’, riddled with damp, and with seemingly designed-in havens for crime in the estates’ dark corners and underpasses. With insufficient services on the estates, many residents felt isolated from the rest of society.

It didn’t help that it soon became evident that they were shoddily built, culminating in 1968 with the collapse of one tower block, Ronan Point in London, when it was nearly new. Neither did it help that corruption between developers and local councils (notably in Newcastle) gave the impression that local authorities had sold council house dwellers down the river.

All of these things conspired to turn public opinion against the State provision of housing, and the new political establishment were able to seize on this. When, in 1980, the Thatcher government broke with post-war consensus to allow council tenants to buy their council houses at a large discount, the pent-up desire for ownership was clearly in evidence. Plenty of working class people did indeed share Thatcher’s dream of a ‘property owning democracy’. Labour only objected to this initially – being against what was obviously the aspiration of many working people would have been wrong.

However, as we are now painfully aware, the problem with right-to-buy was that councils were left with the worst housing stock that no-one wanted to buy – generally the ‘60s era flats, creating sink estates where councils were forced to house addicts, the mentally ill and ‘problem families’ in the same areas. Once they got into power, rather than building new houses to replace the ones sold by the Tories, New Labour further reduced the ability of councils to do anything about the problem by transferring the responsibility for housing to unaccountable Housing Associations.

In Lynsey Hanley’s excellent book ‘Estates’ she accurately points out that the post war dream of the Attlee government was bound to run into trouble when it was commuted from ‘a council house for everyone that wants one’ to ‘a council flat in a high rise for anyone who can’t afford anything better’. The latter is the notion of council housing that I was aware of, growing up in the Thatcher era. There was no such stigma to being in a council house when my grandparents moved into that house in Sheldon, 60 years ago.

Moving back to the mass provision of housing by the State is unlikely in this day and age – society has moved on from that, irreversibly. Over 60% of homes are now owner-occupied. But that doesn’t justify Thatcherite ‘I’m alright Jack’ attitudes – the government should still have the same moral obligation to provide for people that it did in the Attlee era. Serious action needs to be taken to ensure that today’s young people have places to move into that are good quality and affordable, whether that’s through helping people get mortgages, or by providing more social housing. The free market won’t do it for us – just like in the 1940s, the government is going to have to take responsibility for the task at hand.

Of course, brown-field sites should be used first, but if we have to build on new land – so be it. It’s all very well for the baby-boomers to bleat about the aesthetics of new developments – they’re the ones who had no problem buying houses cheap and then watching as their values skyrocketed. We mustn’t repeat the mistakes of the 1960s and 70s, where people were left isolated from jobs, shops and transport. We must recognise that demographics have changed, and provide not just family homes but also homes for single people and childless couples. But more than anything, we just need to get building. Britain has built its way out of recession at least once before, and, maybe, we can do it again.