UK housing crisis

I remember the 72 people who lost their lives in the Grenfell Tower fire exactly four years ago, through profiteering and cost-cutting on the part of those responsible for their safety, and I also look at how, since then, the cladding scandal that became so apparent at Grenfell now involves millions of people in unsafe tower blocks across the country, many of them leaseholders, who bought their homes in good faith, but now find themselves in unsafe and worthless properties, abandoned by the government and the developers of their homes, and facing bills of up to £100,000 to remove the dangerous cladding that was installed through no fault of their own.

A fundraiser marking nine years since I first began photographing London’s 120 postcodes by bike for my ongoing, reader-funded photo-journalism project ‘The State of London’, for which I have no institutional backing whatsoever. Any donations you can make will be very gratefully received.

Marking 1,400 days since I began posting a photo a day, with accompanying text, on my Facebook page ‘The State of London’, from my nearly nine years of photos taken on daily bike rides throughout the capital, with particular reference to the last year that I have spent photographing and reporting on London under Covid.

Here’s a link to, and my detailed description of a recent interview I undertook with Andy Bungay for his show on Riverside Radio in Wandsworth, including discussion of the Save Reginald Save Tidemill campaign, the Grenfell Tower fire, and, of course, the impact of Covid-19 on residential and business rents in the capital. We also discussed my photo-journalism project ‘The State of London’, and Andy also played three songs by my band The Four Fathers.

Marking 1,300 days since I first began posting a photo a day on Facebook from my photo-journalism project ‘The State of London’, which I began five years earlier, in May 2012, this article provides some of my reflections on the last eight and half years, including, of course, the unprecedented upheavals of the last eight months, since Covid-19 turned the world upside down, and largely shut down the City and the West End.

As the second Covid lockdown bites, I wonder how many “non-essential” businesses will survive, but take heart from the news that office rents are collapsing, and that residential rents in inner London are down by 14.9% on this time last year. I can only hope that the uncontrolled property greed that was so dominant before Covid has finally hit a wall, and will be unable to recover.

On the second anniversary of the violent eviction of the occupied Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden in Deptford, I recall that experiment in community solidarity, and also cast a critical eye over other current housing developments in the London Borough of Lewisham, ending with a call for councils across the capital to come to terms with the Covid-induced end of “business as usual” in a housing market that, for far too long now, has been shamefully devoted to private housing profits and unaffordable rents.

Videos made using found footage by Bren Horstead, the drummer of my band The Four Fathers, to accompany the release of our most recent studio recordings, which we recorded in December with the great Charlie Hart (Ian Dury, Ronnie Lane): ‘The Wheel of Life’, ‘This Time We Win’ and ‘Affordable.’

Drawing on an excellent article about COVID-19 and American exceptionalism by the anthropologist Wade Davis for Rolling Stone, I look at the crisis of leadership in the US when it comes to dealing with the unprecedented challenges for our economic future caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, and compare how similar failures of leadership also plague the UK.

Marking 3,000 days since I first set out on my bike on a daily basis to take photos of the changing face of the capital for a project that became known as ‘The State of London.’ On the fifth anniversary of the start of the project, I began posting a photo a day on Facebook, where I have now posted 1,176 photos.