IIRC: a few years ago - when the economy and housing market in the UK were booming - many county councils decided to sell their inventories of public housing to long-term tenants. ‘Council Housing’ was not free; most tenants occupied and paid rent for decades; took pride in their homes - tended gardens and made repairs.
Not all Housing Estates were ghettos. The ‘housing community’ pictured shows appalling neglect and deterioration. It has probably been in this condition for decades. A lost civilization.
I hear of so many girls getting their own public housing unit as soon as they get pregnant and all the families that "live" in government housing and the problems with gangs (also a growing problem in the U.S.).
This article on a gypsy family really struck me. Gipsy family housed in £1.2m home in north London[excerpts] "Tom O'Leary, 42, and his wife Tanya Walsh, 39, live at the five-bedroom property in Muswell HIll, north London with their 12 children.
...In the last decade the council has placed them in 20 different homes, one of which was burned down. Both parents are unemployed and on benefits. Their family of five boys and seven girls are all aged between one and 16.
Mrs Walsh complained: "The council have not given us any furniture and are slow to carry out repairs. They don't have the money to help travellers since David Cameron got into government."
Their neighbours have now begun a campaign to get them evicted. Other complaints include throwing discarded bottles and beer cans into other people's gardens and allowing their dogs to bar for hours at a time." [end excerpt]