Seize Kensington’s empty luxury properties to house Grenfell Tower homeless – Labour MP

Incensed by the plight of Grenfell Tower residents displaced by Wednesday’s tragic fire, Labour MP David Lammy has called on the government to requisition empty luxury properties in nearby Kensington to rehouse them.

Properties throughout Britain’s wealthiest borough, Kensington and Chelsea, are owned by extremely rich, non-UK residents, and are kept deliberately empty.

London housing offers an attractive opportunity to protect money from abroad, and for the last decade or so it has soared in value. The MP has already called for anyone found responsible for the fire to be arrested for “corporate manslaughter.”

The revelation that cladding attached to the outside of the building in order to improve the view from nearby luxury flats may have accelerated the blaze has cast poverty and inequality in London into sharp relief.

Lammy, who is MP for Tottenham, has been particularly outspoken since the disaster.

Earlier in the day, Lammy told reporters: “This is the richest borough in our country treating its citizens in this way.

“We should call it what it is, it’s corporate manslaughter, that’s what it is and there should be arrests made, frankly,” he added.

The MP has also put out a call for a young artist who lived on the 20th floor of Grenfell Tower.

“If you have any information about Khadija Saye please contact me. She is our dear friend, a beautiful soul and emerging artist,” he wrote.

As well as being a friend, Saye, 24, was a mentee of Lammy’s wife Nicola Green, who is herself an artist. Green tweeted out a picture of Saye and a plea for information on Thursday morning.

A recent study by the University of York claimed that up to 13 percent of homes in central London were kept empty.