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This is outrageous nonsense about UK social housing. There is a small amount of truly awful social housing but the vast majority of it is perfectly sound, full

This is outrageous nonsense about UK social housing. There is a small amount of truly awful social housing but the vast majority of it is perfectly sound, full of ordinary decent people. I have council flats in front of me, and to the right of my house and they are full of good people. My brother is a professor of General Practice (a GP/local MD in US parlance) who was on sabbatical in San Francisco 2 years ago. He pointed out to me THEN there were more homeless rough sleepers in Golden Gate Park alone every night than there were rough sleepers in London. Los Angeles had, at that time, 250,000 rough sleepers. The UK (and the rest of Europe) have social (and drug) problems like anywhere buy nowhere are things as bad in the US which effectively has no functioning social security and where whole communities are 2 wage packets from destitution.

petercooper 18y ago
That wasn't the point. The point is that if you have minimal money, some freedom, and plenty of free space, you can just about function (as the tent cities, favelas, and so forth demonstrate). Those are dire places to live but at least you have mobility when the jobs come back.. whereas if you're stuck in social housing you are screwed. The US is full of mobile, resourceful people who have a freedom over the land Europeans could only dream of. They'll get through this however bad it gets. Lazy, dole-riding Europeans? I'm not so sure. (note: I'm not saying "all Europeans are X" but using an adjective to describe a group of Europeans.. sadly some people are stupid enough to think <adjective> <noun> means all <noun> are <adjective>)