| > 1. Why move to London if you're an unskilled worker? Are opportunities elsewhere even bleaker? Sometimes. Sometimes it's the best option available. Sometimes people move to London believing they have a job and it turns out badly. And sometimes people make bad decisions. > Why haven't bylaws been passed to curb this? For example, why aren't residences that are unoccupied by their owner for a significant portion of the year taxed at much higher rates? There's little popular support for it, particularly under a conservative government - historically the party of property owners. The English are very protective of their houses and would fight anything that was perceived to reduce the rights of homeowners. > 3. Why aren't the barge-lords being treated like slum-lords when the barges they run are overcrowded, full of mould, etc.? I understand it's hard to legally enforce a tenant-landlord relationship when it's all under the table, but there must be something the police can do to hassle these guys until they improve conditions. Hence the eviction in the article. I think it's legally harder to treat something (legally) mobile as a home. And any law to tighten the regulation of mobile homes would probably be opposed by guardian-reading liberals as oppression of the traveller community. > 4. Where are the government programs, volunteers, etc. that you usually see in other cities building low-cost housing? Some exist. But their popularity is limited - voters are happy to see their house prices increasing, and no-one wants to live next to people who, as the article admits, party loudly late into the night, use a lot of drugs, and live in unsanitary conditions. |