Alfonso, the concierge, opened the apartment door for Pomona.
The building set on fire by the werewolf stood in North Kensington. It was a social housing "welfare home," a twenty-four-storey building constructed in the seventies, considered high-rise for the Kensington area.
Last year, the Muggle government renovated the building, but corners had been cut and inferior materials used. The materials that should have been fireproof and insulating failed to work, and the blaze consumed the entire building. Seventy-nine people died in the fire, yet the police did not call it arson. Instead, they declared it an accident caused by an aging refrigerator.
This year happened to be an election year. The Labour Party leader called on wealthy South Kensington residents to use their vacant homes to shelter those left homeless by the fire. Thus, aside from tourists, this wealthy district now had some working-class tenants as well.
In London, every district had social housing. To address London's housing crisis and ensure that people with low and middle incomes could afford homes, the government required every property development in London to provide social housing. No matter how high-end the project was, or how prime or popular its location, it had to provide social housing for the government.
These social housing units required applications and waiting lists. Even government employees such as police officers and nurses had to wait in line.
They had suffered a fire, only to end up living in luxury homes. From having nothing and potentially ending up on the streets to becoming neighbors with the richest people around—it all felt unreal, like a dream.
But that was luck. Under British policy, people living in government-subsidized housing, Council Tenants, could only be resettled within their own district. So no matter how expensive apartments in Kensington were, the poor could