UK commentary

Abstract

After years of government-inspired political attacks, and government- imposed financial cuts on local authority housing - including much publicised 'right-to-buy' initiatives, prohibitions on using even money from sales for improving housing, and the selling off (by Conservative boroughs) of whole estates over tenants' heads - the quality and availability of public housing has deteriorated starkly. Black protest over the scarcity of public housing was most drama tically demonstrated when homeless Bengali families in the London borough of Camden occupied the town hall in 1984, after the death of a mother and her two children in a bed-and-breakfast hotel fire. Follow ing the occupation, an investigation into Camden's housing policies was carried out under the direction of local community organisations. * The investigation, conducted against the backdrop of sweeping legislative changes which threaten the very coherence and long-term existence of public housing, has implications for the black community as a whole. Lee Bridges, who served on the Investigation Panel and wrote its report, extracts and summarises the main findings.