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You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/26/playgrounds-rich-kids-housing-social-apartheid
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| Playgrounds only for the rich kids? What grotesque social apartheid | Playgrounds only for the rich kids? What grotesque social apartheid |
| (32 minutes later) | |
| One playground for the children of the rich, another for the poor. | One playground for the children of the rich, another for the poor. |
| It’s hard to think of an idea more crassly offensive than a supposedly mixed housing development where even toddlers are deliberately segregated by their parents’ salaries; where small children have to be told they can’t play with their friends on the swings their flats actually overlook, because that’s not for the likes of them. But that is what appears to have happened at the Baylis Old School development in south London, where an impenetrable hedge separates the owner-occupiers’ kids playground from the narrow strip allotted to families in social and affordable rented housing in the same block. | |
| Have you experienced segregation in housing developments? | Have you experienced segregation in housing developments? |
| It beggars belief that anyone could have thought such social apartheid acceptable but it’s particularly galling in what used to be a school, even if the idea of education as melting pot is arguably more fantasy than reality. The development is on the old site of the Lilian Baylis school in Lambeth, a stone’s throw from Westminster and thus well trodden by visiting politicians. Tony Blair was famously once heckled there by pupils as he opened a new building, but he came in the first place because the then shadow chancellor and nearby resident Oliver Letwin had suggested he’d rather “go out on the streets and beg” than send his kids somewhere like Lilian Baylis. Plus ca change, then. | It beggars belief that anyone could have thought such social apartheid acceptable but it’s particularly galling in what used to be a school, even if the idea of education as melting pot is arguably more fantasy than reality. The development is on the old site of the Lilian Baylis school in Lambeth, a stone’s throw from Westminster and thus well trodden by visiting politicians. Tony Blair was famously once heckled there by pupils as he opened a new building, but he came in the first place because the then shadow chancellor and nearby resident Oliver Letwin had suggested he’d rather “go out on the streets and beg” than send his kids somewhere like Lilian Baylis. Plus ca change, then. |
| For housing is only a mirror of the society around it, in which middle-class families invariably colonise the nicest neighbourhoods – the ones with lots of lovely green space, in the catchment of the best schools – and poorer ones fit around the edges. But even for London this development is a particularly brutal example of social stratification, given that the whole point of forcing developers to include affordable housing along with the posh bits was to encourage residents to mix naturally and break down social barriers. Here, literally the opposite has happened; what was originally shown on plans as a gate opening between these two worlds was later turned (seemingly with planning permission) into an impassable boundary. | For housing is only a mirror of the society around it, in which middle-class families invariably colonise the nicest neighbourhoods – the ones with lots of lovely green space, in the catchment of the best schools – and poorer ones fit around the edges. But even for London this development is a particularly brutal example of social stratification, given that the whole point of forcing developers to include affordable housing along with the posh bits was to encourage residents to mix naturally and break down social barriers. Here, literally the opposite has happened; what was originally shown on plans as a gate opening between these two worlds was later turned (seemingly with planning permission) into an impassable boundary. |
| To their credit, some of the owner-occupier parents are among those protesting that their kids can’t play with friends on the other side of the block. Hopefully they will find ways of smuggling the interlopers into the posh park, but that doesn’t stop other developments from following suit. | To their credit, some of the owner-occupier parents are among those protesting that their kids can’t play with friends on the other side of the block. Hopefully they will find ways of smuggling the interlopers into the posh park, but that doesn’t stop other developments from following suit. |
| Almost everyone involved has an excuse for how we got here. The developer responsible for the better-heeled bit of the block points out that, as is common practice, it devolved responsibility for the social bit to a housing association; the housing association in turn says it has no powers over access. The council says rather feebly that the smaller strip of play space for the poor families meets minimum legal requirements for children (what others might add is that councils under intense pressure to build often aren’t in a position to play hardball with developers, who routinely try and chip away at profit-sapping social housing commitments after the deal is signed). | Almost everyone involved has an excuse for how we got here. The developer responsible for the better-heeled bit of the block points out that, as is common practice, it devolved responsibility for the social bit to a housing association; the housing association in turn says it has no powers over access. The council says rather feebly that the smaller strip of play space for the poor families meets minimum legal requirements for children (what others might add is that councils under intense pressure to build often aren’t in a position to play hardball with developers, who routinely try and chip away at profit-sapping social housing commitments after the deal is signed). |
| Too poor to play: children in social housing blocked from communal playground | Too poor to play: children in social housing blocked from communal playground |
| But perhaps the most candid answer came from a spokesman for the company that manages the private part of the block, Warwick Estates, that the families in social housing don’t pay maintenance charges and that’s why they don’t get the nice playground. It’s not some unhappy oversight, but a deliberate policy to keep them out. | But perhaps the most candid answer came from a spokesman for the company that manages the private part of the block, Warwick Estates, that the families in social housing don’t pay maintenance charges and that’s why they don’t get the nice playground. It’s not some unhappy oversight, but a deliberate policy to keep them out. |
| What a perfectly grotesque microcosm, then, of the mean-spirited society in which we live; a world where even two-year-olds can be treated as freeloaders, scroungers who aren’t paying their way and therefore shouldn’t benefit from the hard work of others, as if there was no such thing as the concept of a public good. The developers should do the decent thing and chop the hedge down. But the real problem is the social attitudes that allowed it to be planted in the first place. | What a perfectly grotesque microcosm, then, of the mean-spirited society in which we live; a world where even two-year-olds can be treated as freeloaders, scroungers who aren’t paying their way and therefore shouldn’t benefit from the hard work of others, as if there was no such thing as the concept of a public good. The developers should do the decent thing and chop the hedge down. But the real problem is the social attitudes that allowed it to be planted in the first place. |
| • Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist | • Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist |
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