In Oxford, Britain’s housing crisis is at its most extreme

In 1888, the Irish poet William Butler Yeats wrote that he was surprised anyone was able to do anything other than “dream” in Oxford, because the place “is so beautiful”. Indeed, so imbued with history and grandeur was the city that Yeats said he half expected “the people to sing instead of speaking… like an opera”.

Just over a century later, outwardly Oxford remains an architectural and historical marvel – a place where dreaming spires and medieval doorways transport visitors – both tourists and students – to other worlds.

And yet, beyond the university’s historic carved stone facades, you’ll find another version of the city, one very much rooted in the present, and not the past. It is one in which local people – from the city centre to the Blackbird Leys estate on its southern edge – a