• RE the whole housing discussion here: I used to live in an area in Belfast where housing was old, things looked run down and so a lot of it was knocked down as it was really not fit for purpose. I used to live in a house that got knocked down, it was tiny and damp.

    It took 10 years of negotiation to get new housing built, but there are fewer houses as the old ones were simply too small. And people had to move out while new houses were being built. That area used to be very close-knit and still is, with people not moving far if they can. Some of them now want to come back. Not all can get a council house.

    Along with that, the local housing executive sold some land to a private company. The local community group which does really good work was not given any assurances just "affordable". Not that they could do anything bar flag it up. So, these new houses are on the market for 130K. The other houses in that area around these are 70K-85K...

    Everybody is pissed off to the hilt with the local politicians (the DUP which are fucking useless for housing and well pretty much anything, SF does a much better job). So people call that out and rightly so. They also call out that other areas (the falls, just around the corner) have done a much better job and landlords are snapping up houses in that area, with locals being unable to move back in. There are also problems with landlords cramming people in houses and the council of course doing f-all about it.

    Unfortunately, the divide and conquer comments of "ethnic cleansing" and "more romanians" also show up. The mindset that foreigners cannot help an area but just parasite it does seem somewhat ingrained. The local community group is not playing that game at all BTW and does a lot of anti racism work.

    But that sort of stuff is always ripe for "we are not the DUP and screw immigrants" politicans. And in poor areas with bad housing poor immigrants go. So a lot of it is an income issue, but instead of working together there is a split forming if people feel the area should be "locals only". And people resent the richer people that don't have to "put up with that".

    And the immigrants coming in may have bigger issues. It is a bit sad, it does feel like nobody talks to each other.

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