London will have to return to the age of the tower block estates

The furore over the London borough of Newham's request to a Stoke-on-Trent housing association to house some of its homeless families is just the tip of the iceberg. London's housing problem is of Victorian dimensions and yet scarcely figures on any political agendas and although housing is not the Mayor's responsibility has not featured in the Boris v Ken election campaign.
Just look at the facts. London's population is expanding, driven in part by people moving to it from other parts of the country or more often from other parts of the world in search of jobs and there is not enough housing to satisfy it. In many cases wages do not cover the high price of accommodation.  On top of this because of sterling's weakness global millionaires are snapping up properties in central London thereby driving up prices and having a knock-on effect on rentals. London's private rental market is already a landlords' market. It is hard enough for young, wage-earning single people to find rented property. If you are relying on benefits, especially now the coalition has capped them, then forget it; you cannot live in London on benefits unless your rent is covered by the taxpayer. But that of course then becomes unfair on those who are having to pay for their own rented accommodation.
On the flipside, outside London there are areas such as Stoke where accommodation is cheap. Newham is just one borough which through no fault of its own has run out of housing and money to top up the capped benefits. It is clearly unacceptable for a borough to 'export' its poor to other already poor parts of the country but Newham doubtless argues it is 'thinking outside the box' when it comes to solving this impossible conundrum.
There is clearly a short-term problem exacerbated by the housing benefits cap and the over-heated rentals market. But it is also a macro-problem which this government, and previous ones, has simply failed to address. London is too expensive to live in, there is not enough accommodation, and yet its population, driven by immigration from within the UK and from abroad, continues to rise. We could of course return to the age of tower blocks, which were a social disaster when it came to housing poor families though worked better for the well-off (such as the Barbican estate in the City). Or governments could simply admit that London has become too big while the rest of the UK stagnates and regional policy therefore needs to be urgently kick-started again. Either way - it is time for government to act.