The problem is poverty, not colour.Look, there is a housing market that is broken, with not enough affordable housing. There is an immigration system that is broken, has no idea how many people it has let in. There is an economy that is broken, recession verging on depression, with high unemployment and cuts in housing benefit that place even crappy privately owned flats out of reach in W.London. There are too many people and not enough housing.Put all these together, and it's clear that a basic human need for shelter is not capable of being met in current market conditions, and nor is it likely to be in the forseeable future. It is not just immigrants who face this problem, but they tend to be poorer on average. Asians often do have larger households, yes, but fewer of them than those of us who don't have 3 generations under the same roof. So, duh, you'll find sheds in poor areas, but not Ealing Common or Pitshanger. Not yet anyway. But talk to anyone under 30, and the vast majority are struggling to achieve housing. We'd better get used to extended family living too.Beds in sheds is a market response to this train wreck, albeit illegal. Few people would ever choose to live like that, but whilst they have no choice it's an opportunity that some "landlords" will take advantage of. Others will be less visibly living in awful, overcrowded conditions that break statutory rules.A lot of you seem to be anguishing about the degradation of London to a shanty town and demanding something must be done. Which is fine, but what? A War on Shanty is as doomed and futile as the War on Drugs, for exactly the same reason: the more pressure is exerted on suppressing illicit and exploitative housing, the more unfulfilled demand will increase the profit to be made by acting illegally. Like drugs, it'll just force housing prices up. Which may be Government housing strategy, unless they're too dim to link cause and effect.Housing is even more of an imperative than drug addiction. You can't just medicate the need for a home away, or send people to rehab to cure them of the need for a bed. You can force people to sleep on the street, but then that is another problem you won't like, and rough sleeping is already illegal. If they squat empty houses, you won't like that, and Government is rushing through legislation to make that a criminal offence even as it cuts regeneration schemes and leaves houses empty and boarded up. Nobody has the budget to build new housing, the banks won't lend the money, incomes are being eaten by inflation, councils have 20 year waiting lists, housing is being gobbled by the wealthy for buy-to-let returns... So what - WHAT? - is the solution that you all propose for the day that all these unsightly illegal tenants get evicted, exactly? Internment camps? Prison? Repatriation of foreign nationals who are already exploited in the black economy and whose incomes can't reach anything better? Punishing the losers just is not going to fix this. And besides, who here is so utterly confident in their good fortune that they might not end up homeless sometime? A lost job, a broken relationship, a breakdown, a bad debt, a business failure is often all it takes. Why don't the planning dept act? Perhaps because they are more capable of joined-up thinking, and know full well that the moment they do, the Council will acquire a large queue of homeless refugees it simply has no resources to cope with.
Tony Sleep ● 5244d