Labour have pulled a u-turn today with the announcement from everyone's favourite housing overlord, Caroline Flint, that they are now going to try and tackle the "problem" of "studentification". This is an issue that manages to branch all of the main parties as reprehensible with even supposedly student friendly MP for Bristol West, Stephen Williams, signing an EDM to tackle "studentification" through excessive planning regulations that would see local residents able to put a stop to student housing being created, certainly affordably so.

The Department of Communities and Local Government is considering building on the introduction of licensing for houses in multiple occupation. It says "studentification" makes some areas "ghost towns" during holidays. - BBC News

What makes all of this interesting of course is the fact that the PM himself has already skipped over ever making such a statement about second home owners. These people own second homes and barely use them, putting the situation of student houses being empty for three to four months a year in a dark long shadow by comparison.

You see there are numbers of residents that complain about this situation of students leaving the town/city at holiday times and the problems this causes to business. This is not the real reason that the complaints are being heard, the real reason is because students are there for most of the year.

Some residents just cannot abide by the noise, litter and unsightliness that supposedly is generated by students in the area, completely ignoring anyone that doesn't keep their garden clean or rocks up at their house after a night at the local pub for a quiz night a bit too raucously. No, these people have a problem specifically with students and have it already set in their mind who the problem is and no-one can seemingly change their minds on this

But what is all this tripe about "balanced and sustainable communities"? I don't see the government giving the seaside trade any help when tourism is low throughout the darker months. I don't see funding from the state pumped in to areas like padstow and in more scenic parts of my home county because rich folk have managed to buy themselves a house they can visit twice a year. Yet business survives because it has to.

If business is being struck hard by students leaving university towns a few months a year then the problem is that of the businesses sustainability, not of the communities. And just how has it become acceptable for us to dictate where or how certain groups of people will live? It is apparantly acceptable to create a situation where students may end up being forced to live in undesirable neighbourhoods at a significant cost of living increase, but would this issue be sailing through so quietly if houses more likely to be lived in by pensioners or those economically less well off were not allowed to be rented to them?

Oh...wait, that's exactly the other outcome. While students are by and large the biggest group that will be affected by any potential policy to limit HMO's in an area, it is also those that rely on HMOs to be able to afford the rent, it is also those that live in managed accomodation when elderly. Perhaps a better example would be to state how ridiculous it would be, yet entirely comparable, if measures were attempting to be found to limit how many black people or gay people could move in to an area to keep communities "balanced and sustainable".

It seems that along with announcements on youth drinking, youth behaviour, compulsory education until 18, greater censorship of media available to youth and trying to make it compulsory for computers to be sold with child locks on them...students of a slightly older age are now in the sights of this government as needing a little more control in their lives despite glaring examples of hypocrisy standing right alongside such policy suggestions.

"balanced and sustainable", buzz words for "not on our doorstep, undesirables".