There’s housing, and there’s housing. What’s being built in Ealing isn’t addressing the needs of those who ‘need it most’. Otherwise the waiting list for social housing wouldn’t be 12,000+, with the council offering the helpful advice to ‘look to live elsewhere’.Much of what is being built isn’t going to last as long as a well built family home. Tall buildings have the fundamental flaw that they are expensive to maintain. Even those able to get on the ladder with one of these flats will soon find service charges prohibitive. And rental costs are high and increasing all the time, already beyond some means.What’s being done is a form of social cleansing. Force out the undesirables who might have needs such as schools, health care and other costly services. Much better to fill the boxes with wealthy young professionals with disposable incomes and little demand for council run services. Plus it boosts the council tax take. Win win. But then those young professionals will eventually decide they want more space, so where do they go?And they can’t shift the overpriced boxes now, as the owners of Dickens Yard and Filmworks in Ealing have discovered. Given the economic turmoil that’s unlikely to improve any time soon.The real need is for family homes with gardens, but there’s no profit in them for developers. The council could build old fashioned council houses. It even got £99million from the Mayor which it could have used for that purpose, as has happened elsewhere.
Simon Hayes ● 1622d