including housing benefit is set at £26,000 a year. The housing changes will undoubtedly
affect people in London more than any other part of Britain. Local authorities expect fam- ilies to become homeless, and Westminster Council has asked the Government to relax the current statutory duty to house homeless families so that only those people who have been resident for two years or more will be helped. At the same time, it will become harder to help single homeless people and young people to move into the private rental sector, and many of the people who have been helped in this way over the last couple of years will be among the first to be hit by the April benefit cap. Those of us who work in housing are fearful that we will once again see homeless families on the streets of London, as well as an increase in the general street homeless population. In fact, the things that have not been cut – the homelessness grant for example – suggest that the Government may well be concerned about these outcomes. So social divisions between and within London boroughs will increase, the economies of the bed-and- breakfast destination towns will suffer as they struggle to handle an influx of poverty-stricken Londoners, and rents in London are unlikely to fall while there remains a ready supply of students and young professionals who can afford them.
racially and culturally, mixed? If there is no more public money for hous- ing, and affordable housing does not make sufficient returns for commercial investment, the only solution seems to be private philan- thropy. Some Christian organisations, such as Green Pastures and Just Homes, are already doing this to some extent, but much more is needed. We are reaching a stage where we need philanthropists with the vision of George Peabody to help Londoners out of the mire. Peabody, an American banker, founded his organisation in 1862 for the relief of the poor and “to promote their comfort and happiness”. If not philanthropists, could the Church
I
play a role? Parishes will continue to provide rudimentary food and shelter, but there is more that can be done. The Dioceses of Leeds and Birmingham, for example, are using empty presbyteries to house asylum seekers. Has the time come to extend this to local fam- ilies priced out by benefit cuts? Is there land or buildings owned by dioceses or religious orders that could be used for affordable hous- ing? (Housing Justice’s Faith in Affordable Housing project can help here.) Do Tablet readers have spare rooms they could let at low rent to single homeless or young people? If ever we needed a Big Society solution to affordable housing, it is now.
■Alison Gelder is director of Housing Justice, the Christian housing and homelessness charity.
s there any alternative scenario that could help both provide badly needed afford- able housing and help London and other cities remain economically, as well as
CATHERINE PEPINSTER
‘Now St Paul’s Cathedral has been turned into a backdrop, a stage set’
One of the ancient traditions of the construction industry is an event called “topping out”. When the last beam of a building is put in place, those involved in the project climb to the top to commemorate the event. It’s rather akin to launching or naming a ship and perhaps owes it roots to antiquity’s ideas about placating the gods and urging their protection. Despite never having been a
builder, or an engineer, surveyor or architect, I used to attend a fair few of these ceremonies. It was the early 1990s property boom, I was writing about architecture, and each week a new building seemed to sprout in the City of London. There are two things you can guarantee about new buildings in the Square Mile: there’s always a fancy topping out, replete with champagne, and nothing must be built that blocks the view of St Paul’s Cathedral. Planning regulations ensure that the “sight lines” of Wren’s masterpiece must always be preserved.
A vista is one of the essentials for making a city attractive. Think of the curving streets of a medieval cityscape such as York and the way that turning a corner or looking down an alleyway suddenly affords a sight of the Gothic minster. Charlotte Bartlett knew the importance of a view when she accompanied Lucy Honeychurch to Florence in E.M. Forster’s A Room with a View, and was furious to find they were lumbered at their pensione with nothing better than the sight of a backyard. The novel ends with Lucy’s return to the city with her husband and a hotel room with a view of the Arno and the church of San Miniato. Here the view represented hope for the future and challenges to the status quo, but a view of an historic church, particularly glimpsed among contemporary designs, represents tradition, and timelessness. The psalmist might lift up his eyes to the mountains, but the city dweller raises his gaze to great architecture. That’s never more so than with St
Paul’s Cathedral, and just why it matters so much to Londoners is explained by the famous photograph taken during the Blitz. The previous
St Paul’s had perished during the Great Fire of London but this one seemed almost impervious to the flames of war. Churchill knew that the sight of St Paul’s standing proud amid all the chaos and destruction as German bombers targeted the City was vital for morale, and he demanded fire-fighting resources be directed to the cathedral. Then it was a symbol of Britain standing alone against Naziism. Today it still has a powerful hold on people’s affections. Dr Giles Fraser, the canon chancellor of the cathedral, tells me his appointment there made him realise how significant a place it is for Londoners, even when they hardly ever go inside. Its presence reassures them, and offers a reminder of God amid Mammon’s spoils. Now, though, something has changed. Another bomber – a shopping mall nicknamed the stealth bomber – is making an impact on Londoners. Called One New Change, it has opened next door to the cathedral, stuffed with designer outlets and expensive restaurants. But the relationship between One New Change and St Paul’s is very different from other new buildings in the City, the ones that architects design so that they don’t overshadow the great classical cathedral. Here, you don’t get a sudden glimpse of the dome or the porticoed entrance. No, here, if you lunch in Jamie Oliver’s new restaurant, St Paul’s looms over you. It has been turned into a backdrop, a stage set. If you see St Paul’s from a side alley or a path with names like Amen Court or Ave Maria Lane, it proffers little hints, here and there, of God waiting in the wings of your life – a twitch upon the thread. One New Change has turned it into one giant prop. People are thronging its malls, the tills are ringing and its swift success has been taken as evidence that the economy, as before the financial crisis, can depend on consumer spending to bounce back. But Londoners might ask themselves what kind of capital they want: one that was as flash and flush with cash as before or one with different kinds of values. Giles Fraser and his colleagues at St Paul’s might want to try attracting more Londoners to venture inside the cathedral that they love so much. When they do, they will find Wren’s epitaph, for he is interred in the church he built: “Si monumentum requiris circumspice” – “if you seek his monument, look around you”. And what would visitors make of London as a monument to the values of its citizens?
6 November 2010 | THE TABLET | 7
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