Housing and Hypocrisy

Red Brick relates the sad tale of government hypocrisy with regard to homelessness.  Government cynically set standards that they know their own policies make it impossible to meet.  It is now inevitable that large numbers of people will face upheaval as they are forced out of London.

What happens next? The way I imagine it, large numbers of people get dumped in the poorer parts of the UK.  As these parts have fewer jobs available, they are more likely to get trapped in a cycle of poverty and benefit dependency, the opposite of what the government says it intends.  Poverty also tends to encourage greater use of many public services, putting those services under greater strain. This is likely to lead to resentment among the indigenous population, and social conflict including violence which no doubt the ministers will condemn.

Meanwhile, London will see parts of its population unable to afford decent housing, but unwilling to move out to part of the country where it will be impossible to earn a living. This will encourage a black economy of overcrowded housing with probably extremely poor standards in terms of building controls, fire safety and so on.  The problems of overcrowding will also encourage wider effects such as declining educational standards, poorer health and so on.  This will create more problems within London's public services.

These possibilities must have occurred to government ministers. One assumes they simply don't care.