Much public housing is both perfunctory and patronizing, providing adequate shelter and slight ease.
Britain has 3 million inhabitants from minority ethnic groups, mostly in highly urbanized areas, and all of them, especially Africans and Afro-Caribbeans, have problems getting decent housing. The sheer diversity and scale of the British colonial venture is what makes it different. Britain's very long history of colonial entanglement is where it all starts. Prasad likes to say that his firm designs everything from opera houses to operating theaters but they are especially active in public housing for minority groups, working now on the conversion of early 19th-century houses in Stepney to accommodate immigrant extended families. Their research has indicated that immigrant families do not wish their houses to stand out and prefer to avoid areas of high racial harassment.