Some Grenfell fire survivors to be housed in luxury units

LONDON— After nearly a week of being shuttled among community centres, hotels and vacant properties, weary survivors of London’s worst fire in decades learned Wednesday that some of them would be housed in a luxury complex where some apartments go for more than $14 million.

In an announcement that startled some survivors, the government said it would acquire 68 units — ranging in size from one to three bedrooms — to permanently house some of the displaced families.

The units are in a complex that is a little more than two kilometres south of Grenfell Tower — the 1974 building that was incinerated early on the morning of June 14, killing at least 79 people — but there is a social and economic chasm between the buildings.

Immigrants from Eritrea, Sudan, Somalia and other poor and troubled countries, many of them refugees, were crowded into subdivided apartments in Grenfell Tower.

In contrast, the housing complex, Kensington Row, has large spacious apartments with modern, luxurious finishes and a range of amenities including a 24-hour concierge, swimming pool, spa and private cinema. The complex is worth $3.4 billion.

The local council, which oversees the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, owns Grenfell Tower. It received harsh criticism for what critics say was a slow and ineffective response to the emergency. Angry residents marched on the borough’s town hall on Friday, and Sunday, Prime Minister Theresa May’s government seized control of the disaster response, sidelining the borough’s officials.

It was not immediately clear, however, whether the Grenfell residents would be given access to all of the amenities in the building.

Grenfell Tower had a mixture of owners, renters and subtenants, and a tenant activist group, the Radical Housing Network, said Wednesday that it was awaiting details of who would be eligible to live in the new homes. Some of the survivors also worried about the social dynamics of their relocation.