When I encountered him first, in 1964, the Wilsons had just finished dinner and the Prime Minister was relaxing at his ease on a brass bedstead. He spoke to me, as I thought, with an absurd hustings-air, about his intention of cleaning the slums up with one blow. I tried to prick his political manner.

"How will you house all the inhabitants?" I asked him. "If this were the tropics perhaps you could put them into tents, but it is England and winter is approaching."

"I shall lodge them temporarily in public buildings--town halls and the like."

"Do you think they will be content? Now they have one lavatory between several families. Under your plan they will have one lavatory for hundreds."

I don't remember his reply.

SOURCE: A World of My Own: a Dream Diary by Graham Greene, p.26

EDITOR'S NOTE

Greene knows his politicians. But it wasn't just Prime Minster Wilson, or just Britain. On the far side of the world, in my home town (San Francisco), similar technocrats played "urban renewal" without asking the residents--the unspoken point was, after all, to drive those riffraff out! In the Fillmore District, run-down but gorgeous Victorian and Edwardian mansions were demolished not restored... and replaced with concrete apartment blocks oozing Soviet charm.

Like Greene, I lived through the Cold War, and while I'm still not sure what it was about, I know it wasn't housing. When it came to Underclass Storage Units, the technocrats and commisars were in perfect harmony.

--Chris Wayan

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