Britain's estates are 'social concentration camps'
Three decades of failed policies have destroyed the life
chances of millions living in public housing, says a
devastating new report. Emily Dugan investigates
The Independent
3 May, 2009
Millions of people have been condemned to live under
"social apartheid" by 30 years of poor housing policies, a
damning report on council estates will say this week.
The 107-page report, to be published on Friday, condemns
successive governments for pushing poorer people into what
it condemns as "social concentration camps" set away from
private housing, jobs and shops. Children born on such
estates are more likely to end up unemployed, suffer mental
health problems and die younger than their counterparts in
private housing, says the study by the Fabian Society. Most
damningly for the Government, it concludes that pledges by
the then Prime Minister Tony Blair to end "no-go areas" and
close of the gap between rich and poor have ended in
failure.
The report, entitled In the Mix, finds that by
concentrating council housing in estates set apart from the
wider community, successive governments have produced a
situation where living in social housing is not just a sign
of poverty but a cause in itself. It is blunt in assessing
Britain's housing policy as "nothing short of disastrous".
According to the Fabians, children bought up in social
housing now have far fewer life chances than half a century
ago, because they are concentrated on increasingly
ghettoised estates. Those born after 1970 in council homes
are twice as likely to suffer from mental health problems
than those born in 1946 in public housing, 11 times more
likely to be unemployed and not in training or education,
and nine times more likely to live in a household where
nobody has a job.
The gulf between those left stranded on these estates and
rich or even middle-income families is wider now than it
was 30 years ago. In England and Wales, the average
electoral ward is 16 per cent public housing, but in the
poorest wards that figure rises to 70 per cent or more.
By splitting up those living in public and private housing,
successive governments have fostered suspicion towards
those who live on council estates. Research for the study
found that a third of those polled felt people living on
council estates had "nothing in common with them", and 60
per cent of those believed that mixed housing would be a
bad idea. It concludes that segregated estates have had a
devastating effect on social mobility. "There is nothing
inevitable about this correlation between housing and
disadvantage. It has been caused by political and
institutional processes – and such processes can be
arrested and altered."
The London Borough of Islington is widely considered the
essence and epicentre of New Labour. It also illustrates
the national gulf between rich and poor. The Andover
estate, one of the biggest in the country, has now become a
byword for deprivation, with high rates of unemployment and
ongoing problems with drugs and crime. Tina Baillie, 41,
first moved to the estate in north Islington when she was
11, and lives there with her three children, Rick, 18,
Abbi, four, and Vinny, two. Her boyfriend is in prison and
she says she has been out of work for "quite a while" now.
Her hopes for her children are simple and informed entirely
by the cycle of unemployment on the estate. "What do I hope
they do? Work."
Although fiercely defensive of its residents, she blames
the estate in large part for her life as it is now. "I
wanted to do everything when I was younger: air hostess,
modelling, the lot. But what am I doing? Fuck all! I'd move
off tomorrow if I could: get a house and be somewhere
different. But my kids love it and it's what I've got."
The struggle to get work can often simply be a product of
coming from a certain estate: tenants living there become
stigmatised, often having trouble finding work simply
because of the postcode they live in.
Deborah Murphy is already terrified that her children will
get stuck in the cycle of boredom, crime and unemployment
that mars so many within. The 49-year-old, unemployed for
several years, shares a small flat with her daughter
Keshia, 18, and her four-year-old son Casey. "It's hard to
make something of yourself here," she says. "I don't want
my son to be here when he's 18 or 19 because there's
nothing here. It's hard to get a job: if they find out what
estate you're from when you apply it's really hard."
Andrea Assanah, 29, has brought up her nine-year-old son
Bradley on the Andover estate, but she spent her childhood
on a mixed street of houses. "I would have loved that for
my son," she said, "but I had to take what I could when
this place came along. There is definitely a better sense
of community on a street and you feel less cut off."
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