Look Around You

The Labour MP for Hackney South and Shoreditch, Meg Hillier, has produced this little gem in her January 2008 newsletter:

"Fifty four per cent of newly built homes in Hackney in 2006/07 were affordable homes".

Take a look around you. Look at the properties that have been built in your street, and in your neighbourhood. Do you think you could avoid to buy one of them?

Do you think you could afford to buy any of the properties built in Hackney in 2006-7?

Comments

[Chairman Meow]

This "affordable homes" statement is vacuous. That's the beauty of terms such as "affordable homes", , they're not quantitative.

Anyone on the streets of Hackney can tell you how far out of reach the first rung on the property ladder is for most people.

Communities are being broken as a consequence of the over-inflated prices as only 'yuppies', buy-to-let greed mongers and property companies can afford to buy. These actors don't contribute to the fabric of the community and bring with them the trappings of gentrification - generic chainstores, eating away centuries of the cultivated character of London.