What happens when London's housing crisis meets the climate crisis? Journalist Peter Apps discusses the changing demographics of the capital and how the lack of affordable housing has ruptured its social fabric, pushing families and workers out to its edges and \"taken away people's ability to stay in a place and to gain some sense of ownership and belonging.\"
\"What has been lost is a sense of permanence and a sense of security that London used to offer to working class and lower-and-middle income people and now doesn’t. It’s a struggle to find somewhere to stay, you probably don’t know the people around you, and that bond of being part of a rooted community isn’t available to people anymore. The key driver is housing.\"
When you add climate change to the mix, not only does this worsen inequality between those who can afford to install air conditioning and those who can't – it endangers lives. \"London has flooded before. It went through the Blitz. The thing that gets us through disasters is community,\" says Apps. \"The lack of a spiritual sense of home will make it harder to be resilient.\"
Apps shares what he discovered while writing his latest book, Homesick: How London Broke Housing and How to Fix It, which recounts the changes to London over the past 40 years and looks 40 years ahead. Apps speaks to Christine Murray about the three big threats London is facing in addition to housing crises: Wildfire, flooding and overheating.
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