Notice: Surrey Fabian Society Hosts Marketisation Of Housing Talk

Published on: 5 Nov, 2019
Updated on: 5 Nov, 2019

The next meeting of the Surrey Fabians will be on Sunday, November 17, when Glyn Robbins will talk on the subject of The Marketisation of Housing.

The meeting will take place from 3pm to 5pm at Church House, 20 Alan Turing Road, Guildford GU2 7YF.

Glyn Robbins is a housing worker and campaigner and visiting fellow at the London School of Economics. He has a PhD in urban policy and his writing on the subject has been widely published. His book There’s No Place: The American housing crisis and what it means for the UK was published just before the Grenfell disaster and Hurricane Harvey hit Houston.

It is pertinent for understanding why both those events were such disasters for poor, working-class and predominantly non-white people. By studying eight widely different US cities with their correspondingly diverse examples of housing, Robbins exposes the UK’s own housing crisis and the frightening direction that public housing may take if policy continues to emulate the US mindset.

Dealing with the housing crisis is one of the key battles in the current General Election campaign, and Glyn’s presentation is therefore very topical.

The Fabian Society is Britain’s oldest political think tank. Since 1884 the society has played a central role in developing political ideas and public policy on the left. Today it counts more than 200 parliamentarians in its membership of over 7,000 people, with 70 local societies meeting regularly throughout Britain, a vibrant Young Fabians section, and the Fabian Women’s network.

The Surrey Fabian Society is 47 years old and organises local events including meetings with expert speakers on a wide range of topics of public concern.

For more details email its secretary, Warren Weertman, at secretary@surreyfabians.org.uk or visit www.facebook.com/surreyfabians/.