It’s often claimed that London is becoming a city only the rich can afford to live in while its poor are subjected to “social cleansing”. The argument has been advanced by opponents of council estate redevelopment, social housing sales, creeping redefinitions of what an “affordable” home is and the government’s imposition of benefit caps affecting people on low incomes who rent privately.
There are, without doubt, new factors making it harder than it could be for at least some of the least well off to find accommodation in the more expensive parts of the capital or to remain in their present homes or neighbourhoods, not least London’s rapid population growth. It is, though, less clear whether council, mayoral and national government housing policies are making central and inner London off-bounds for people on low incomes or displacing them against their will on a large scale.
This is illustrated by a dispute about the impacts of the coalition’s benefit caps in London. A report just published by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) finds that “there does not appear to be significant movement across London” as a result of the cap, with over 80% of Inner London claimants who’ve moved within twelve month periods since capping began remaining in Inner London and a similar picture applying to Outer London. The report finds that that “there are only small numbers of moving house” at all. For example, just over 6,000 households “in scope” for the cap in May 2013 moved within the following 12 months of which only around 300 moved from Outer London to outside London (see pages 47 and 48).
By those measures, then, any correlation between benefit capping and outward displacement of claimant households doesn’t look vast in the context of a city of 8.5 million people. However, Labour London Assembly member Fiona Twycross has a different take on this. She has published government figures showing that between March 2011 and August 2014, the number of claimants in the expensive boroughs of Camden, Islington, Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea and the City of London has fallen from 21,982 to 16,010 - a drop of 5,972 or 27% over the full period. For the whole of Inner London there has been a fall of 8,608, down from 102,136 to 93,528.
Twycross notes that over the same period the number of claimants in Outer London has risen by 14,883 (up from 164,896 to 179,779) and argues that “a perfect storm of falling wages, rocketing house prices and government cuts” has resulted in “families who have lived their whole lives in Central London” being “forced out”. She says “the rising cost of living and the housing benefit cap” have been “pushing a quarter of low income households out of central areas” and contends that “if the trend continues central London will become the reserve of the privileged, a no-go zone for lower income families”.
Where you stand on this displacement debate probably depends on such things as what you consider to be to a significant number of households moving, what sort of distance moved you think qualifies as being “forced out” of a particular area, and to what extent you consider moves brought about by the cap will have harmed the people involved - almost all them large families living in the sort of high rent areas Twycross highlights - compared with the sacrifices those who’ve stayed put might have had to make in order to do so, such as spending less, burning through savings, running up debt or depending on help from others. It’s also worth noting that the increased numbers of claimants in Outer London aren’t necessarily due to displacement from the centre: rents have increased in Outer London too as have poverty rates, for which there could be a number of reasons.
But what about the wider housing picture? Is it the case that the amount of housing affordable for and accessible to the poorest Londoners has been dramatically lessened in recent times? In some ways the story isn’t as alarming as might be feared.
The government’s live tables on dwelling stock figures show that Camden, for example, contained 34,639 council and housing association homes in 2009 and a slightly higher 34,980 in 2013. In Westminster there were 28,066 council and housing association homes in 2009, and this had fallen to 27,340 by 2013 - a drop, but not such a huge one compared with the total number. In Islington, council and housing association homes accounted for 41,590 out of 99,020 dwelllings in the borough altogether. In Hackney, the figure was 46,120 out of 104,360. The total across Greater London in 2013 was more than 800,000 out of 3.4 million - slightly more than in 2009.
All of this needs to be seen in the full cost of living context, especially given recent evidence about income reductions among London’s poorest. But while housing for the least well off may be under pressure in London, there’s still a long way to go before all its inhabitants are purged to its fringes and beyond. That’s something to be thankful for.
