Squalor

Spiralling rents, exorbitant house prices, a lack of council housing and a poor and badly maintained housing stock in polluted cities where green space is increasingly developed or out-of-bounds to the public is a picture of housing provision in the UK that could fit either the wartime era or that of today. The housing crisis has been the subject of numerous neoliberal fixes, none of which have provided a satisfactory answer to the lack of affordable housing.

Increasingly divided into the haves and the have-nots, housing epitomises the divisions and social inequalities found in Britain today. The Grenfell Tower fire focused attention for all-too brief a period on the racialised and class-riven system of housing provision for the poorest people in society.

This book exposes the history of the British problem of squalor and the government’s repeated failures to grasp the nettle when it comes to fair and just solutions to shelter, the most basic of human needs.