Shropshire Star comment: Large lack of housing is laid bare
It is strange indeed that while Telford is having to throw open the doors to people from London who most probably do not wish to live here, our sympathies are with those people who are being relocated.
Being asked to start a new life 150 miles away from London is just plain wrong for working class adults who cannot afford to live in their home city.
It amounts to the social cleansing of London’s once-proud communities as the haves move the have-nots from their place of birth.
It is not just Telford welcoming families from London, which in many ways is a separate economic entity to the rest of the UK.
Rents are sky high, the economy is deeply divided between the rich and the poor, and there are people with perfectly serviceable jobs who cannot afford a home. Other parts of the Midlands are effectively offering refuge to economic migrants who are being pushed further north to make way for those who earn more.
And what of the families in Telford who wait patiently and hopefully on housing queues, only to be told they have been usurped by those from afar?
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A sense of injustice will be understandable among people who are pushed to the bottom of the queue.
The situation is entirely unsatisfactory for the people from London who have to leave their homes, families, jobs and schools, or for the people locally who are swept aside and local councils that face the economic burden they can ill afford in times of austerity.
It shows we have a broken housing system where too little social housing has been built over many years.
Chickens are coming home to roost and unsatisfactory outcomes abound.
Rather than focus on short-term solutions, the Government ought to make more effort to provide long-term solutions to the ongoing housing crisis.
It is not acceptable we live in one of the richest countries in the world but are unable to provide such basic needs as shelter. In many cases, people are increasingly reliant on food banks when we have an abundance of food for those who can afford it.
A cohesive and sustainable strategy to provide more housing for the needy ought to have been introduced 20 years ago. The need is very real and there can be no more shilly shallying. Solutions must be found.
