Housing the Many - Stadt der Vielen / dérive - Zeitschrift für Stadtforschung, Heft 65 (4/2016)

DANNY DORLING
HOUSING
A better politics
Distribution of Wealth, Inequity,
Housing Regulation, Social Cleansing
Photo Chris Bethell
(originally shot for VICE).
By 2015, in any neighbourhood of San Francisco, it
had become impossible for a single teacher to pay the
median rent on a one-bedroom apartment; the average rent in
the very poores t neighbourhood there rose to $3,500 a month.
Cali fornia n teachers’ starting annual salaries were $50,000. After
paying taxes and buying food, any teacher without recourse
to wealth would inevitably find themselves in debt (Moskowitz
2015). However, travel a third of the way round the world in
the opposite direction and you come to Tokyo, where rents have
fallen by over 15% in the last ten years as landlord greed is
bette r controlled (Smith 2014). In contrast, in the UK, rents in
the city of Oxford, for example, are rising rapidly and will
soon exceed £1,000 a month for a one-bedroom apartment.
This will leave rent consuming a large majority of a newly
qualifie d teacher’s income of £22,000 a year. Indeed, it leaves
very little after taxes are deducted and clothes and food are
paid for (Fransham 2015). Few newly qualified teachers stay
long in the city, meaning that a very large proportion of teachers
in Oxford’s schools are young and inexperienced.
Rising Rents and Social Cleansing
Average UK private rental prices went above £1,000 a
month during the early autumn of 2015. One-bedroom flats in
London had already passed that price level in August 2015.
Nation ally, in 2015 rents were rising by 4.6% a year, but by 20%
a year in London boroughs like Islington (Butler 2015). Part
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dérive N o 65 — HOUSING THE MANY Stadt der Vielen