The new blacks

摘要

Ahandful of permanent residents remain in Manor Avenue. One of them is trying to move out. It is not hard to see why. The street has come to resemble a slum, with potholes in the road and gardens concreted over to make them easier to maintain. Most of the terraced houses are filled with unruly, transitory tenants who feel little connection to the neighbourhood. They are not poor (at least, not in a social-class sense) but young, which, if you are a home owner, may be worse. In Headingley, a formerly quiet suburb of north-west Leeds, students are regarded with the same sort of distaste that the inhabitants of 1950s London reserved for West Indian immigrants. The sense of panic in the face of an invading army is the same, too. "When the proportion of students in a neighbourhood reaches about 40%, the other properties tumble like a row of dominoes," says David Morton, a local Liberal Democrat councillor.