The private renters trapped in Britain’s new slums
Years of austerity have driven the poorest into squalid, crumbling homes. Can this cycle be broken?
The stark human cost of Britain’s decade-long austerity drive, welfare reforms and warped housing priorities can be glimpsed in 11 decaying flats carved from what was once a grand Victorian terrace home in Weston-super-Mare.
These bay-fronted houses were most likely thrown up in the Somerset resort’s 19th-century building boom, which carpeted the reclaimed marshland behind the windswept seafront with terraces, hotels and guesthouses. Now they are home to vulnerable private renters trapped in a desperate cycle of falling benefits, squalid housing and poor health.