A review by dansumption
Big Capital: Who Is London For? by Anna Minton

4.0

A depressing but important read on how London and the UK's housing stock is being turned into a financial asset rather than places for people to live. Since Margaret Thatcher's Right to Buy initiative in the 80s, most council houses in the capital have been sold off, and the estates that many of them are on are being demolished in order to build higher cost housing in their place (with even those who bought their homes now forced out of them so that new investment opportunities can be built for the super-rich). London councils of all political persuasions are conspiring with big developers to sell of their estates, due to huge cuts in council funding. Meanwhile housing benefit, which was intended as a safety net in the age of reduced social housing, is no longer fit for purpose due to sky-high rents and the bedroom tax, and councils are shipping the poor further and further out of London, in some cases half way across the country. The result is a dying city, and the knock on effects mean that the rest of the country is on its way to suffering a similar fate.