Fear and loathing in Tunbridge Wells

Some of our social housing is hideous, to look at and live in and, if we can steer developers into building more affordable homes rather than just throwing up luxury flats and offices, that has to be a good thing.

It’s just a shame that such initiatives always seem to be tainted with a fear of the poor, rather than being driven by an urge to abolish poverty.

The subtext of this kind of policy seems to be that the poor will always be with us, so our best hope is to spread them out.

In the USA, public housing projects are considered offensive because projects intimidate the better-off and concentrate too many poor people in the one place, rather than trying to blend them with their betters whose proximity could work as a kind of social mentoring.

Another way of looking at it is that it might be good for the well-to-do to be forced to interact with the less-privileged. Fear and loathing are bred by ignorance, rather than experience, and this country is probably more snobbish than it has ever been.

It has an enormous middle class, much of it engaged in greed-based enterprise; the unionised, respectable working class has been marginalised; and there is a growing perception that we have a viral underclass.

It is socially acceptable to sneer at others for being incorrigibly vulgar: stand-up comedians now jibe at “chavs” and “pikeys”, the latter term of abuse having expanded its target group beyond Travellers – though Travellers are still at the bottom of the heap when it comes to the hierarchy of esteem.

Racism, too, tends to be at its fiercest not in mixed communities but where different groups live in completely separate ghettos.

But even if we create mixed communities, we can’t stop people moving away. “White flight” isn’t a simple matter of racism – white people tend to associate black people with poverty, and with poverty comes dysfunction, educational failure and crime.

I doubt whether the residents of London’s Mayfair would object to black people moving into their neighbourhood, because those black people would have to be rich too.

This country is more snobbish than it has ever been. It is socially acceptable to sneer at people for being incorrigibly vulgar ‘chavs’ or ‘pikeys’

People move as they climb socially. Recent immigrants tend to be hard-up and live in poor areas, moving on if they prosper, like students and first-time buyers.

In fact, the rocketing cost of housing has impelled the younger middle classes to colonise areas that their parents don’t feel safe visiting – so the movement isn’t all one-way.

The sale of council housing now means that people who would once have thought it an act of desperation to move into ex-local authority flats are now buying them up. Somehow, the fact they are paying off a £200,000 mortgage, and not renting, makes that acceptable to them.

So we’ve got a bunch of issues here.

There is a stigma attached to renting in this country. The French don’t have the same problem, the same need to own. For them, a castle should be a National Trust ruin with a gift shop – not an Englishman’s home. We need to centre our approach to building homes on the idea of creating places to live – that is what will enable the development of healthy, mixed communities.

Homes shouldn’t be viewed as an investment or a source of income. People should not be poor, and solving that problem should be any government’s overriding priority; but if people are hard up it doesn’t follow that they should live in a dump.

Social housing should be done up so it’s nicer to live in, not so it can be sold off. Private landlordism and house prices should long ago have been brought under control.

Perhaps Gordon Brown should shelve his leadership ambitions: he’s got enough to be getting on with already.