Londoners: The Days and Nights of London Now - As Told by Those Who Love It, Hate It, Live It, Left It and Long for It

Author:Taylor, Craig [Taylor, Craig]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781847084484
Publisher: Granta
Published: 2011-11-03T07:00:00+00:00

ROBERT GUERINI

Property owner

Margaret Thatcher came in as prime minister in 1979, and she realized soon after that to get the votes and to be politically in the ascendancy she could offer council tenants the opportunity to buy their houses or flats. This was a social disaster – why? In the city centre, we need people to maintain the city, guys to do the gas, the electricity, the water and so on, and people to run the transport system. We can’t have these people come miles. What’s happened now, the council flats in the city were all sold to the incumbent for a very low figure because they were sitting tenants or they’d been there for so many years. So a guy and his family, he’s a man of 60, he’s able to buy his flat for £20,000 and he’s able to sell it within a year, I think they had to wait a year, they could sell it for £180,000. Of course he sold it, packed up his stuff down to Bournemouth where he bought a lovely flat overlooking the sea. Well you can’t blame him. But, having said that, the person that got that flat then was often a buy-to-letter who rented it on to somebody else, but not at £50 a week. It was £100 a week. Now slowly but surely cheap accommodation for working people in the city contracted. It was a real tragedy in my opinion.

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