Understanding the problems with UK social housing

Recently one of my readers found this article about two murders on the same night happening in Camden, London and yes I do live in Camden. The two murders took place whilst I was at my gymnastics club (also in Camden) and both murders were about a five minute walk from my gym. Now, this may make you think, "that sounds really dangerous, do you worry about your safety?" Actually no, I am not worried about my safety in Camden and this has got to boil down to a strange situation associated with our social housing patterns. this article is going to be a somewhat politically incorrect lesson in geography: we shall be discussing the links between urban planning, social housing and crime in London. But to kick things off, please let me start you off with an analogy to help you get your head around this quite bizarre situation.

I live in Camden, north London.

Once upon a time, in a university somewhere far, far away, a security guard had just started his night shift and decided to walk into an empty chemistry lab. He then noticed that the scientists in the lab had some chemicals in the lab which were marked highly flammable, corrosive and explosive. The security guard thought, "oh dear, this looks so dangerous, I had better store all these hazardous chemicals out of harm's way in order to prevent an accident. So he scanned the lab for every single item marked flammable, corrosive or flammable and moved them all into an empty storeroom nearby. He then surveyed the lab and ensured that there were no dangerous chemicals left in the lab - quite pleased with himself for having organized the lab and made it a lot safer, he closed the door of the storeroom a little bit too hard. The vibration was just enough to rattle some of the bottles on the shelf in the storeroom and one fell over, spilling corrosive acid into the box on the shelf below, precipitating a chain reaction of the most volatile chemicals mixing and combusting spontaneously. Sure enough, within minutes, there was a massive explosion in that storeroom - it was a terrible idea to store all your most dangerous chemicals in one small, confined place like a storeroom. So the scientists had actually done the right thing in spreading these chemicals out throughout the lab, thus reducing the risk of such accidents.

Okay, that's a story that's often used to illustrate a point, I'm not sure if this had actually happened or not in real life but the point is clear. Now let's apply this principle to how social housing works in the UK: the government builds social housing for the very poorest in the society who cannot afford to find a place to live on the private rental market. These social housing provisions are basic and are rented out to these people often at a heavily discounted price or sometimes the most destitute are allowed to live there for free. If you have a good job and are relatively rich, you will not live in such social housing for two reasons: firstly, these accommodations are allocated according to need. If you're an unemployed single mother with two babies, then you jump to the front of the queue - there is a complex list of criteria to determine who qualifies for social housing and who doesn't and quite simply you can be deemed 'too rich' for social housing if you have a decent job. In any case, these social housing are built in clusters known as 'council estates' and these are the equivalent of the storeroom where the security guard has stored all the most dangerous chemicals in the lab. You're surrounded by the poorest in society and crime rates are actually a lot higher on these council estates. If you can afford it, you just wouldn't want to live somewhere like that. The people who live on these council estates have no other choice.

After WW2, the population grew steadily in the 1950s, 1960s and into the 1970s, resulting in a huge growth in demand for social housing. The government then was under a lot of pressure to build a lot more social housing very quickly - these resulted in some pretty big council estates which looked pretty respectable when they were first built, but the problems arose when the people who moved into these council estates were the very poorest in society. Now some of my more left-wing friends would criticize me for drawing a direct link between poverty and crime: after all, not all poor people have criminal tendencies, you can be poor and totally honest. Likewise, rich people can be totally corrupt and dishonest by the very same token. But if you're talking about the kind of crime like muggings, murder, assault, rape and stabbings, then the statistics are clear: the incidents of such crime are far higher in neighbourhoods with a larger concentration of poorer people, typically living on council estates. A doctor or a lawyer would never think about resorting to petty theft or mugging someone who a small amount of money because they just have too much to lose if they get caught: whereas some of the most deprived youngsters living in the worst council estates in the UK have literally nothing to lose when they turn to petty crime. These are the young people who have truly fallen through the cracks of society.

You might be thinking, this makes no sense: if I want to rob someone with money, I'd go to where the rich people live, right? Maybe I'll pick on an old man in a nice suit with a gold Rolex, yeah that'll be the kind of person I'd rob - not someone on the council estate who will be unemployed and poor. Let's look at the case study of the 2011 London riots: local residents were protesting about a black drug dealer was shot dead by the police in a confrontation. Tempers flared when they clashed with the police and it descended into a full scale riot that spread across England - but if the protesters were fed up with the police, the government, of being oppressed, did they attack the symbols of authority like the government buildings in Whitehall and Westminster? No. Did they attack the symbols of capitalism like the designer boutiques in Bond Street and the banks at Liverpool Street? No. The worst affected areas were Tottenham, Hackney, Brixton, Walthamstow and Peckham: what did these neighbourhoods have in common? These were where the poor people lived - in large council estates. In contrast, the richer neighbhourhoods like Kensington, Chelsea, Mayfair, Hampstead and Knightsbridge were left completely unscathed. The riots, which were led by poor people, overwhelmingly affected the very neighbourhoods where they lived - this is the irony, it is like cutting of your thumb to spite your hand.

By the time the 1980s came around, the UK government realized that they have to stop building these really huge council estates as they are not creating conducive environments for living. Of course a lot of the people living in these council estates are poor people who are totally honest and are guilty of no more than being poor, but they disproportionately bear the brunt of the crime being carried out the criminals who inhabit these council estates. So the more recent developments in the last 30 years or so have been a lot better planned, with a lot of  integrated housing - this means that rather than building a whole estate exclusively as a council estate, new housing developments comprised of a mix of social housing and private developments. This granted private property developers the chance to get their hands on some prime property in big cities to build some luxury developments but they would be situated right next to some new council housing. Of course, this is a deliberate method to break the vicious cycle of certain neighbourhoods being deemed safe whilst others being deemed dangerous by deliberately mixing up and disrupting the housing patterns - by making rich and poor people live alongside each other. In principle, this was indeed a great idea.

So let's talk about Camden, the neighbourhood where I live in North London. There are a few clusters of big council estates that were built in the 1960s and I would never walk through those estates - it would be asking for trouble. Otherwise, the newer council housing developments are more well-planned and scattered around the area, so for example, my friend who is a banker lives on Lawford Road in a huge house with five bedrooms and a lovely garden. His house is worth several million pounds and you might think, okay that must be a nice road to live on, right? But if I were to walk to his house, I'd have to pass a building that is comprised of council housing on Lawford Road. Now because it is only one building with probably around 10 to 15 small flats, it is unobtrusive and people just accept that it is the government's policy to deliberately place a block of council flats on a nice residential street like Lawford Road, to make the rich and the poor live side by side. If you're curious about what this looks like, go to Google maps and look for the address "53 Lawford Road, London NW5" on Google Street View to have a look at how this actually looks like. I doubt such housing patterns create more social cohesion, but at least they do help prevent the kinds of social ills associated with the very big, older council estates. Now, remember what I said about the chemicals in the lab earlier in the article?

However, a lot of the social housing in Camden are older than the block in Lawford Road and there are big estates comprising of several blocks in a gated compound. To gain access to these compounds, you would need a key to get past the gate, but that doesn't keep the residents safe as the threat to their safety are often other residents - their neighbours within the compound, rather than any kind of external threat. As we've seen in the 2011 London riots, criminals tend to target their local communities for a variety of reasons. Firstly, they are on home turf and are familiar with the environment, so they can evaluate the risk associated with crimes they are planning a lot more accurately. Sure, breaking into a rich man's home on somewhere like Lawford Road may be tempting, but there are just too many unknown variables such as the kind of security alarm system such a house would have, whether they have dogs or CCTV and also if the neighbours are observant. And even if you somehow manage to gain entry to the house, what if the rich man keeps his valuables in a safe that you just can't break into and trying to carry a TV out of a second floor window is just too difficult? Whilst you may get more precious loot targeting rich people's houses, it is far more difficult to get away with a crime like that when you're on very unfamiliar territory. It is not the kind of crime you'd get away with easily.

But when the criminals are on home turf, they know exactly where the more vulnerable people live, who are the easy targets and which families to leave alone. "Mrs Iqbal at number 45 lives on her own and she has some expensive jewelry that she keeps in her flat - she attended a wedding the other day and was seen wearing them. The Carters live at number 42 but you'll wanna stay the hell away from them - their son Jack is unemployed and rarely leaves the house, He spends his days surfing porn and playing computer games, you never know when there'll be someone in the house as Jack may be in any time of the day even if his parents are out at work. We'll wait till Mrs Iqbal goes out on Saturday - that's the day she goes visit her grandchildren in East Ham and we'll have plenty of time to find her jewelry. Mrs Iqbal's neighbours at number 46 are not on talking terms with her and will just look the other way even if they saw anything." And of course, the criminals would know exactly how to break into Mrs Iqbal's flat as the flats in a council estate are all pretty standard and have the same layout - none of them would have any kind of security/alarm system and if you're a petty criminal looking to score an easy goal, then people like poor Mrs Iqbal would usually be the victims of crimes like burglaries. The criminals are not 'Robin Hood's trying to somehow redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor in some kind of socialist gesture with their crimes - they often do not care whether the person they are robbing are rich or poor.

There's also a very practical reason why some streets in Camden are particularly unsafe: the criminals who are looking for victims to rob will know their local area best. We're talking about the street, the immediate area where they may have grown up and have lived for many years within the council estate. So they know exactly where to hide whilst they wait for their victim, where to ambush their victim from and they will also know exactly how to escape most efficiently after they have committed the crime. But by that same token, these criminals tend to avoid busy roads because these places are too well lit for them to have anywhere to hide, there are too many CCTVs that may catch them in the act or capture them escaping. Besides, if say a woman screams for help in a busy street, chances are somebody would respond to her cries pretty quickly. That's why the main streets like Camden High Street and Camden Road are usually very safe whilst the smaller, more quiet alleys in and around the council estates become remarkably less safe especially at night. The bottom line is that criminals want to get away with their crimes, they don't want to be caught and sent to jail. So that means committing their crimes in certain locations, especially on their home turf, where their chances of success is the highest. It's call a home ground advantage and with that in mind, I use my local knowledge to stay the hell away from where they may have their home ground advantage - that may be as simple as going down one road instead of other or making a small detour to avoid a certain stretch of road near a big council estate. It's not rocket science at the end of the day.

Now one thing that the news report would never mention is that the victims of the stabbings were poor, working class, black, young man who lived on these larger, older council estates in Camden (you would have to infer that). If you tick all of those boxes then the chances of you being attacked goes right up. By that token, if you are a rich, middle class, white, older lady who lived in a nicer part of Camden, then the chances of you being attacked are remarkably low. Ironically, whilst the stabbings are horrific in nature of course, the fact is a lot of these crimes are confined to the vicinity of the council estates and it may spill out into the surrounding areas. There are certain areas like bus stops, train stations and local supermarkets where the rich and the poor mix and share that space and I would feel very safe in crowded places like my local supermarket or train station. However, there is a bus stop in front of the big council estate where one of the stabbings took place - now I would never wait for a bus there as I just wouldn't feel that safe, especially if I was alone at night. A lot of drug dealers operate in these council estates and it is not the drug dealers that I am afraid of, but when you have drug dealers, you also have drug addicts and many of them would turn to crime just to get the money to feed their addiction. This means that there are certain streets in Camden where you can walk down alone even at night and be totally safe, whilst there are other streets which you should totally avoid even during the day. And of course, some council estates are less safe than others - a lot of it depends on geography and urban planning: are the streets, corridors and alleys well lit at night? Are there any secluded corners where a criminal can hide whilst stalking his victim? If you shout for help in this street, would anyone hear you? Has the council installed CCTV in strategic places to deter the criminals?

I know what you're going to say: why not just demolish some of these bigger council estates built a long time ago and start all over again, with much better urban planning this time? Ideally, that would be the perfect solution and if this was Singapore, that's what the government would have done already. However, you have to consider the fact that thousands of people live in just one of these big council estates and building new homes for all of them would come at a huge cost at a time when the UK government just don't have the money. The British economy is bracing itself for a turbulent few years as we face the uncertainty that Brexit will bring, there just isn't enough money in the government's coffers for the kind of programme to demolish and replace these older council estates. The government is taking a different approach to improve life on these estates: they are investing modest amounts of money to maintain the existing housing stock, for example by replacing old lifts, building playgrounds and other facilities for the children and painting older buildings that look unloved. The government has also engaged plenty of social workers to engage the people living in these council estates to make sure that the older, more vulnerable residents are always cared for and there are various youth engagement programmes to make sure that the youth from the very poorest families are always given the right opportunities for education and employment, steering them away from a life of crime. It's not like the government isn't doing anything - they are really trying their best with a very limited budget but the UK is not a rich country these days.

So for now, don't worry about me, I'm perfectly fine because where I live is very safe - it is on a main road away from council estates and I am armed with enough local knowledge to protect myself. Sadly, the UK is paying a high price for some of the poor decisions made when it comes to the design of these older council estates and all we can do is mitigate the situation for now whilst being a lot more careful in planning future housing projects. In due course, some of the oldest and worst council estates will be demolished and replaced with much better planned developments - but this is something that is not going to happen in the short run given how much such plans will cost. In the meanwhile, us Londoners will just have to depend on our local knowledge to stay safe. Do leave a comment, many thanks for reading.