Rubbing Our Noses In It

Cremer Street

The new Peabody development on Cremer Street seems purpose built to annoy council tenants. With its glaring yellow paintwork, the building seems to tell locals that it’s not for the likes of us (and the rents of about £150 a week don’t help either).

Positioned next to the run down blocks of Fellows Court, the Peabody development stands out as a reminder that the makeup of the population in the area is being socially engineered – working class people are being replaced by upwardly mobile city types. They didn’t even advertise the flats in Hackney, but instead put ads in an Islington local paper – and even then it was the upmarket Highbury and Islington Express, with a middle class readership rather than the more widely read Islington Gazette.

Spot the difference?

And what about the Peabody ethic of providing housing for London’s poor ? Well, conveniently they’ve just written that part of their history out of their constitution.