Austerity to the poor, and now we want your home!

Now someone has noticed this anomaly, which means that working-class people are still living in posh areas of our cities. It’s a scandal, as a headline in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph pointed out: “No one has a right to live in Kensington at taxpayers’ expense.” A right-wing think-tank has tackled this injustice head-on with a report – endorsed by the housing minister Grant Shapps – which wants councils to sell posh houses and use the money to build cheaper homes.

Inevitably, given the shortage of space in our cities, that means somewhere else: a place we might usefully designate “Not-Kensington”, where people on low incomes can be with people like themselves. They’ll be more comfortable, you know, with all the other Kayleighs and Duanes. Another way of achieving this species of social engineering, it now occurs to me, would be to create zones in our cities where parents who give their children certain first names are not allowed to live. But that’s not (yet) the proposal to hand. Policy Exchange is urging local authorities to sell off “expensive” social housing as it becomes vacant – magnanimously allowing the current tenants to die there or move of their own accord – and build hundreds of thousands of cheaper homes with the proceeds.

via Joan Smith: This is ghettoisation by government decree – Joan Smith – Commentators – The Independent.