Few words get more bandied about at election time than the word “community”. It used to refer to the social togetherness contained within a particular geographical area. Its key stations were the pub, the church, and the shops. In the general hubbub of such places, a magical chemistry of mutual attachment would soften the hard shells of our defensive individualism and bind otherwise very different people in a sense of common enterprise. And when people get to know each other like this they tend to look out for each other, including the most vulnerable among them. That’s probably why the church likes community: historically, it has easily been the most effective delivery mechanism for organised goodness and social care.

But in many places the very existence of community is under threat. My parish in south London is a case in point. On the Elephant and Castle edge of this parish is one of the largest property developments currently under way in the capital. It’s an attractive place for developers as it is a run-down area, some of it with a zone 1 postcode. Which is why the skyline is full of cranes and the cafes full of men in hi-vis jackets.

Lendlease, the Australian property developers of the massive 24-acre Elephant Park, also love the word community. It is plastered all over their marketing material. They seek to create a place “with the community at its heart”, says Lendlease project director Rob Heasman. Encouraging words. But the charity Transparency International has been digging around in the Land Registry records and discovered that 100% of the flats that have been sold in the latest South Gardens parcel of the Elephant Park development have been bought by overseas investors. That’s right, all of them. At the time of Transparency International going to press with its report in March of this year, all the owners of the flats in this block had their address on the property records listed as 2 Tower Street, London WC2, the home of the property solicitors Riseam Sharples, whose website explains that they “specialize in acting for investors from the Far East in the acquisition of London residential property”.

But not only are these flats being sold as piggy banks for east Asian capital looking for a safe place to park itself, many of them are not even occupied. Transparency International did some research looking at electricity use in areas where lots of flats are owned by anonymous companies. And – surprise, surprise – the electricity use was consistent with many of the flats being long-term empty.

It’s little wonder people have a problem with globalisation. Street by street, areas like mine are being hollowed out by capitalism. Poor people, or even people on average incomes, are being gradually moved on. And replacing them, new flats are going up inhabited – or rather uninhabited – by absentee owners who rarely make an appearance. I have never seen the lights on in many of the flats of the tower block I can see from the vicarage window. And in such a place, community is little more than an artist’s impression on the marketing literature. I fear that capitalism is turning my parish into a ghost town. The problem isn’t buy to let – it’s buy to leave.

Wealthy liberal metropolitan types who are unaffected by this sort of change are puzzled that people are turning to the far right to find answers to the evisceration of their communities. But the centre ground of politics has nothing to offer by way of resistance to the huge global forces and capital flows that are turning places like this into some soulless pile of stratospherically expensive steel and glass. As all this emptying out relentlessly unfolds around me, and as more and more parishioners, sizzling with resentment, are pushed further out of town, I am left trying to figure out what it is to be a parish priest in an area without any people. It is as if the very idea of the local is becoming meaningless. Increasingly, my parishioners live in China. The Church of England doesn’t have a model of ministry for this sort of parish. And, unfortunately, neither do our politicians.