Will the State look after you?

Inge daniels talks to Jacky Peacock from Advice to Renters on the housing challenges faced by vulnerable people in London. In this episode Inge Daniels talks to Jacky Peacock, director of London-based charity Advice for Renters. Based in the London borough of Brent the organisation provides private tenants in crisis legal advice, financial services and mentoring to help them improve their living conditions. London is a city of extremes. Its reputation as a tax haven has attracted investors buying luxury housing that remains empty for much of the year. Yet simultaneously, poverty is rampant and poor-quality housing and rough sleeping is increasing. How has COVID-19 impacted society’s most vulnerable? What hopes are there for change in the future?

Om Podcasten

Disobedient Buildings (disobedientbuildings.com) is a multi-sited research project about housing, welfare and wellbeing based at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, part of the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography (anthro.ox.ac.uk), at the University of Oxford. It is funded for four years by the Art and Humanities Research Council. Launched in January 2020, the project employs a multi-disciplinary team of researchers and visual practitioners to study the impact of neoliberal reforms over the past three decades on the everyday lived experiences of inhabitants of ageing tower blocks in different European welfare states: the UK, Romania and Norway. The Disobedient Buildings podcast is conceived and presented by Inge Daniels, the project's principal investigator, and the project’s two postdoctoral researchers: Gabriela Nicolescu and Anna Ulrikke Andersen. In Season One, the team scrutinises key themes guiding their research such as disobedience, inequality, urban development, welfare and health. The 10 episodes feature interviews with local experts and highlight commonalities and differences experienced by residents in the three field sites of London, Bucharest and Oslo. The podcast asks, what is a disobedient building, why is home ownership promoted, and will the State look after you?