The gentrification of London

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In the summer we had a terrible tragedy where 71 people were killed in a tower block fire in the London borough of Kensington. The fire was accelerated by cladding on the outside of the 25 story block used to make the building look prettier in a move to gentry this area of London. As with most building work the contractors and architects took the opportunity to skimp on material because they were hosing the poor and by using substandard, not so fireproof materials’, turned the building into a fireball after a regulation flat fire and people suffered what can only be termed as corporate manslaughter. Tower blocks galore around the country have this stuff on them and the councils don’t have the money to take it off. The inquiry has begun and court cases will follow but the mostly black and ethnic minority tenants and survivors of the fire, and the relatives of, don’t trust the mostly all white authorities dealing with it. Right from day one a lot of people with a chip on their shoulder tried to make out the fire was some sort of conspiracy to kill brown people and the number of dead was played down to hide some sort of incompetence and claims the there were over 200 dead. All this anger and protest after the fire hampered the emergency services, police and forensics from actually getting a final death toll. None of those agitators have yet to apologize. In fact some 50 people were arrested for fraud and theft in the last 6 months, some claiming they had lost relatives in the fire so trying to score some of the £15 million quid raised through charity for the victims, three going to jail for that. The people needed to be re-housed and with the wraith of the nation on the governments back over the fire and the snobby council the tower block sat in trying to get rid of the poor people in that tower, many are holding out for a better deal. Home is what you make it, of course, and although the tenants enjoyed living in the block some were illegal immigrants or unauthorised sublets and so hard to work out just who was in the building legally and so compensate and re-house them fairly. Clearly some of those who were not their legally are trying to hustle a new place and so holding up the process. Others feel they are owned an upgrade and you can hardly blame them. There is plenty of housing capacity in the borough of Kensington & Chelsea but most of it is privately owned, kept empty as an investment, London property prices only going up. Four-fifths of those made homeless in the fire have yet to be found a permanent home, leaving many in temporary flats or staying with family; 105 households – around half of those displaced by the disaster – are preparing to spend the Christmas and New Year holiday period in hotels, six months after the fire. Not that many of them celebrated Christmas. But here’s the thing. If these guys don’t accept housing soon there are plenty worse off who will, like the endless flotilla of thousands upon thousands of African and Syrian refugees coming across the Mediterranean heading for Europe’s big cities. I’m not saying these guys are ungrateful but they need to be realistic. The London housing crisis is not going to change any day soon. London is nearly a majority ethnic city and very rich and poor.