Poor doors, social housing and the politics of accomodation

I'm starting to face the fact that I may no longer be working class.
Between myself and my wife we own four and a half degrees, three cats, one (mostly unused) bread maker and one house. We've also just started employing a cleaner. Or as a friend of mine neatly put it, "ha, you now have staff".

When we lived in Milton Keynes we had a rented house on a key worker estate. It was fine. Everyone was either a teacher, policeman, nurse etc and it was a pleasant enough atmosphere. We didn't feel like second class anythings. Skip forward to us finally getting our own house in Leighton Buzzard on a new build...and the first thing the estate agent said to us was 'how far away do you want to be from the social housing tenants?' We were genuinely shocked.
Our supposed transformation from one social group into another was brought back to me this morning when I heard about these so-called 'poor doors' and the growing economic divisions in the UK. Housing has always been political. It's been used to keep rich and poor apart since Victorian times but there's growing evidence that it's happening on a larger scale.

So with all that in mind I'd like to suggest some resources to you; firstly, a radio show called the Moral maze covered the topic of social inclusion from a moral standpoint last night (Wednesday) at 8pm on Radio 4. Just follow this link to listen again if you don't see this post until after it's been broadcast: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b054qfjx  .

Finally, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation is constantly examining the links between housing, health and social standing. The full range of their published reports is available from here.