Tuesday, September 02, 2008

Numbering the houses

We are told that there is a boom in the old-fashioned practice of taking in lodgers to provide some extra cash in these crunch-ridden days. The government has a rent-a-room scheme & the BBC is producing a 21st century version of Rising Damp

There’s always a demand for rooms in cheap areas, says a spokesman for a lodgers website

The BBC will be very multiculturally correct, with Polish workers, Kosovan refugees, a Thai bride & an Iranian immigrant as tenants

But since we are talking about rooms in peoples homes, I expect there will be a lot of discreet discrimination going on, though not as blatant as in the old No Irish, No Coloureds, No Children days

Just recently there has been a renewal of demands to abandon the decennial census of population, on the grounds that it is too slow & cumbersome to keep up with rapid changes at local level such as those brought about by the recent wave of immigration

Those arguing this case have a point but not, I think, a winning hand. For in this country the census of population is combined with a census of housing. No other source can give so much basic detail on the stock & how people organise themselves to fit into it. This is especially true when it comes to individual towns & even smaller areas

At a time of possibly seismic changes in the supply & demand for housing, we surely need reliable information on the response to these changes