Would You Buy a House on Benefits Street?

Channel4’s documentary, ‘Benefits Street’, which follows the impoverished residents of James Turner Street as they duck and dive to make a living, making some pretty startling admissions along the way, enraged half the population of the U.K. Primary gripes included: the people on the show being alive, claiming benefits and being lazy.

'White Dee' is a resident of the street

Presumably, the people complaining were doing so from their iPads on a DFS sofa their parents are still paying off after 4 years interest free. But that’s by the by. Following the doc, which has been condemned by many commentators – including those who were featured on the show - as being exploitative, house prices have dropped on the now-infamous road.

According to The Independent, you can get your hands on a three-bedroom semi-detached property on James Turner Street for £77k – just over half Birmingham’s average house price, which stands at £155k. The house, which has been on the market for 5 months, was priced at £80k.

Street resident Dee Roberts told the Birmingham Mail: “They said they wanted to film for a TV show about how great community spirit is in the street and how we all help each other out on a daily basis.

"They said that ‘Britain was broken’ but that I lived in an area where the community was very close. I participated in the show on that belief. But this program has nothing to do with community, which you can tell from the title. It’s all about people in the street living off benefits, taking drugs and dossing around all day. It makes people out as complete scum.”

Fungi's activities weren't exactly celebrated by the British public

While I watched Benefits Street on my ivory throne, sipping a goblet of coke and lobbing grapes into the agape gob of a stuffed jaguar, I didn’t feel the need to Tweet out my feelings like this bunch of… humans. And for all the faeces-slinging – mainly in the direction of those living in abject poverty – it’s Love Productions laughing all the way to the bank, isn’t it? Probably First Direct, too.