One of the things that makes London such an attractive place to live in is its democratic nature. The incredible achievement of geographically widespread social housing makes virtually no part of London a no-go zone for the poor. Yes there are wealthier and poorer areas, but the borders between are porous. A consequence of living in London’s economically diverse communities is that relationships are developed that wouldn’t be possible in more stratified cities. These relationships often form the basis for positive community actions that improve our community assets and build social capital. Critiques of the cuts to housing benefit often cite Paris as the undesirable outcome of these actions. With its wealthy inner city and impoverished suburbs, it is held to be a place of entrenched inequality. I’m sure this is true, but it is also true throughout the world. My hometown of Brisbane in Australia has seen the poor relegated to the very outer suburbs by gentrification and in Sydney, the class division is brutal.

The primary danger to our communities posed by the government’s attack on the housing benefit scheme is that gentrification is a one-way street. Once the poor or marginal working class are forced from an area they don’t tend to return. The government’s shameful willingness to toy with the very foundations of community in a country where these achievements are rightly heralded as a singular success is staggering. Nick Clegg may get a bit squeamish at the term ‘social cleansing’ but this is what it is, and denial of it is hard to rationalise.

Beyond the negative consequence for our social fabric, the victims of this policy who will be hurt the most are those currently in receipt of housing benefit. These people will be in the unenviable position of being caught between two policies pulling in opposite directions.

To take the prime minister at his word, he really does seem genuinely committed to seeing welfare recipients who are able to enter the workforce do so. There is nothing at all wrong with this sentiment. That it is better to earn money as a result of your efforts than it is to remain welfare dependant is plain. I would wager it is a view shared by the vast majority of benefit recipients.

What the government seems oblivious to is that while employment provides positive effects for an individual’s wellbeing, unemployment has an inverse power of its own. Addressing the effects of long-term unemployment on a person’s capacity to function is a critical step in reducing unemployment. As much as homelessness is more than the lack of a home, unemployment is more complex than a lack of a job. People who are unemployed for a long time are readily afflicted by low self-esteem, are more prone to depressive illness, suffer chronic stress and a sense of general worthlessness. The cruelty of this is that this understandably also tends to reduce greatly commitment to jobseeking and capacity to perform part-time or full-time employment.

Simplistic pantomime of holding up a card with the number of new jobs created and the number of people on benefits goes nowhere near addressing these issues. There is often a stark difference between being unemployed and being job ready.

One of the massively positive effects of social housing in the UK has been to provide people who are long term unemployed with a secure and adequate home and to deliver a level of stability to their lives. It is difficult to overstate how powerful this is for people and conversely what a powerful demotivating effect removing this certainty for people, removing them from their communities and inducing chaos into their lives, will have.

This will be further compounded by moving people away from the infrastructure they rely on and moving them further from locations of job opportunity.

If the government is serious about bringing down the numbers of long-term unemployed they would make a good start by aligning their housing policy with that goal, not pulling away from it so sharply.