Thousands of people are being needlessly forced out of their communities, exiled from their homes and pushed away from friends and family, all due to a government policy that is entrenching class division. Just as Thatcher promoted with her highly controversial right to buy scheme, this Conservative government is once again stimulating house prices to mimic the symptoms of an economic recovery - when in actual fact, they are intentionally condemning thousands of poor families to ghettos of poverty and crime.
If you're a part of the suburban and property owning middle class, you will probably welcome the constant inflation of house prices under this government. However, for the majority of poorer families, house price rises mean being unable to keep up on rent payments, leading to evictions, poverty, and starvation. As house prices increase, more and more ordinary people are purged from their homes and communities; slowly but surely exiling the poor from suburbia. The Tories are waging class war on the few remnants of working class spirit and community, displacing working class families with middle class ones.
Have we already forgotten about the driving force behind the 2008 financial crash? For those of you who need a quick reminder, the current global recession we're recovering from was a crisis caused by casino-style investment in collateralised mortgages - a trend in the investment markets fuelled by an unprecedented housing bubble. Just 6 years on, our financial and political elite are already falling to the same inflationary temptations. However this time they will profit from the suffering and hardship of thousands of families being displaced by the housing bubble.
While greedy landlords and investors make obscene profits, we have a growing underclass of people becoming the subject of their extortionate demands. Landlords already choose to outright refuse tenants with housing benefit, and some even say that they'll place similar restrictions on people receiving universal credit - if this isn't class discrimination, then what is? Despite what some might say, this is absolutely an issue of class. The politicians will talk about rising house prices in terms of economics and finance, but they will always fail to recognise the underlying class hatred that is intensifying the current crisis.
There are people right now who are homeless as a direct result of government-led inflation in the house market. This doesn't sit well with me, and it shouldn't sit well with you either. We're facing a huge humanitarian crisis here in the UK, yet nobody from the media or political arena seems to care! Personally, I think we should be up in arms about what is essentially a geographical reconfiguration of our country based on lines of class, rather than community and merit.
In 15 years' time, what will the Greater London suburbs look like? Will they remain somewhat culturally diverse, or will they find themselves reserved solely for high earners and white middle class families? The economic policy of the next government will have huge impacts on the geographical direction of our country, especially concerning income equality and social mobility. How can we expect poorer children to succeed when they are isolated in these poverty ghettos? There is only one thing worse than experiencing the effects of poverty first-hand, and that is experiencing the effects of other people's poverty. As more and more working class people are forced out of their mixed communities and into poverty hotspots, the threats of crime and addiction become increasingly real - making it extremely difficult for these people to escape their poverty and hardship.
The Attlee government of 1945 made the promise to give every single British citizen a home, food to eat and access to healthcare. The combination of rising living costs, rising house prices and NHS privatisation are making this promise increasingly distant. It's up to people like you and me to stand up for those living in poverty - after all, who else will?