As the rich buy up property and ordinary people are forced out, we ask experts and London residents what can be done

Ekow Eshun

Writer and broadcaster

London's position as one of the world's great creative centres is based on an embrace of diversity. Our art, music, fashion, film and design take their inspiration from the huge distinctions of race, class, income, nationality, language, food and accent that make the city unique. Difference is our wealth. It's what makes this city so restless and dynamic, so strange, rich and beautiful.

But as London increasingly becomes a place for an economic elite it risks losing what is most exciting about its identity. We can see this most explicitly in the way that flats in Shoreditch and Hackney and Peckham are too costly for the students and young artists that turned those neighbourhoods into creative hotspots in the first place. In how £9,000 tuition fees at colleges like Central St Martins makes applying for fashion or design courses a daunting prospect for poorer students. In how the preference for trophy artworks by the likes of Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons among the collectors who jet into Frieze each year comes to define what's on show in the capital's galleries.

Of course, there's always been a tension in the city between the haves and the have-nots. And art tends to find its way even, sometimes especially, in times of adversity.

But a city like Berlin feels more alive and cosmopolitan than London right now because it has nurtured, not overlooked, its creatives. And by comparison our capital feels increasingly bland, increasingly homogenised, as though it is losing its soul.

Stephen Boatwright

Headteacher, St Cuthbert with St Matthias primary school, Earl's Court

For many years my school has been proud of its rich mix of children. We are proud that we provide a good education for children from a wide variety of cultures, languages, religions and economic circumstances.

Things are changing for the school, which reflect our changing community. We began to see the changes as the new benefit regulations were introduced. These have meant that families cannot afford to rent privately locally. This, coupled with the shortage of social housing, is having a profound effect on the school.

At first the effect was subtle but this year there is evidence of dramatic change. In 2011, about 63% of children in the reception class were eligible for free school meals; this year only 23% are eligible, a reduction of around two thirds.

Linked with this has been the rise in children whose first language is English. In 2011, only 18% of the reception class had English as a first language whereas this year 33% of the children have.

On Friday yet another parent informed me that they will be moving to outer London because they can no longer afford to live here – a parent who works as a senior professional in an NHS hospital.

The richness that defined our school and our community is being weakened. We are educating our children to appreciate and live in a diverse city, in many ways a model city for others around the world, but the diversity appears to be reducing and there will be increasing polarisation of the children entering the school. The children whose parents are not able to work and whose home language is not English will find themselves isolated and we will have to make greater efforts to include them fully so that they feel a valued part of the community.

Children are going to the outer boroughs, Barking and Dagenham and Enfield. Their families are further from jobs, further from relatives and further from the cultural support they have previously had.



Dan Crow

Chief technology officer at live bands website Songkick. He has worked for Google and Apple

London's tech startups have, so far, not been badly affected by the rise in house prices. Most of those working in startups rent rather than own and rents haven't risen as much as house prices in the last year.

Startups tend to skew towards young/pre-family workers – the average age at a company such as Songkick is probably in the mid-late 20s. We tend to live in the cheaper parts of the city, so we're less affected than those in the more affluent boroughs. But if house prices continue to rise, eventually we will be hit. A 10% annual rise is clearly unsustainable and will eventually be bad for all businesses in London.

And there is a more localised problem with the cost and availability of office space in the popular Silicon Roundabout area in Shoreditch.

It is harder to find an office than it was a few years ago and prices have risen dramatically as a result. This has made it harder for new startups to locate here. As a result, clusters of tech startups are now thriving elsewhere in London and in other cities in the UK. But that is a good thing, as it spreads the benefits of the entrepreneurial spirit more widely and it brings good, interesting jobs within the reach of a wider number of people.

Professor Jerry White

Teaches London history at Birkbeck, University of London

It's always dangerous to generalise from our own experience, even our neighbours'. Michael Goldfarb is describing a phenomenon of family-flight that has long been a part of the metropolitan experience.

In London the migration of young newcomers has usually more than made up for the deficit and so it is now. It hasn't always been like this, even in our own times. London's population shrunk from 8.6 million at its highest point in 1939 to 6.5 million around 1985. The reasons for this were varied but chief among them were the loss of jobs (manufacturing and the closure of the upper Port) and London's failure to offer its citizens the opportunities and lifestyle they wanted.

Now, though, for a moment in time, London is a spectacular success. It is no surprise that those with the capacity and energy to take advantage of it flock here, the super-rich among them. But it is a delusion to think that a few hundred, even a few thousand, fabulously wealthy individuals can affect the lives of 8.2 million people.

The rich are surely to be welcomed as bringing financial stimulus to a service and cultural economy that need to remain not just sharp but world-beating. Goldfarb is right to be worried by the London housing problem. It results, though, not from pressure at the top but from a shameful lack of affordable public housing for the millions of people who make this city tick. We need to let London's boroughs build again.

Jerry White's London in the Eighteenth Century was published in 2012 and his Zeppelin Nights: London in the First World War will be published by the Bodley Head in May 2014

Alexandra Jones

Chief executive of

Centre for Cities, an urban

policy research unit

I was struck last week by the talk of a great exodus, people leaving the capital in their droves because they can't afford to live here any more. Where I live and work, it's very hard to see any evidence of this happening – yet.

Instead what I hear is that the London property market is a feeding frenzy. That's how a friend describes her experience of trying to buy a family house in London. Despite she and her partner being among the top 10% of earners, they routinely spend weekends bidding tens of thousands over the asking prices for houses in outer London suburbs, only to be told other buyers have already lodged significantly better offers – and in cash. At the same time some towns are boasting of "record house price reductions", London prices are rising weekly, with Help to Buy allegedly fuelling the fire.

The demand for property is driving this escalation of prices. London's population continues to rise sharply – it is set to hit 10 million by 2030.

So will the house price boom in London eventually reach a tipping point, where ordinary Londoners can no longer afford to live, work, or bring up families in the capital?

In London, property is increasingly not about homes, but about investment. Wealthy individuals from across the globe see London property as the best place to get a guaranteed return for their money. But limited houses and limitless cash mean prices keep on rising. Rents are soaring too; over the last two years, 34,000 more households in London have sought help for private sector rent, 96% of them working.

Ironically, the global city of London has few powers to affect its future. Property taxes are low and go to the Exchequer, not City Hall. London can't even raise taxes to invest in its transport or school places. London – and other cities – need more control over money they can invest in their own future. And we have to build new houses as if the future of the capital depends on it – because it does.



Martin Vander Weyer

Business editor,

the Spectator

Michael Goldfarb, an American expat in London, has spotted a trend. His friends – who aren't poor – are being driven out of our capital by soaring house prices, while a stampede of super-rich foreigners are buying in.

Can anything halt the trend or the damage? A mansion tax would merely hasten the exodus of long-time Londoners whose homes have multiplied in value, having first forced them to exhaust their savings. Goldfarb thinks council tax is too low – but council tax is a charge for what's left of local services rather than a redistribution mechanism. Hiking it would punish everyone.

On the other hand – given the critical housing shortage – why not apply punitive council tax rates to houses left empty, as many are that have been bought as safe-haven investments? Why not halve the £600,000 upper limit of George Osborne's Help to Buy scheme, to stop subsidised mortgages fuelling the bubble? And let's have an "affordable housing levy" on multimillion pound property – not a wealth tax but a one-off transaction tax that would fund one affordable flat for every mansion sold or increased in value by a vulgar extension. Finally, let's hear a message from mayor Boris Johnson: not just "Your money's welcome" but "You and your money are welcome, so long as you're ready to be a real citizen of London".