Reporters Jeremy James, Jeanne La Chard, John Pitman, Jack Pizzey, Desmond Wilcox, Harold Williamson

Throughout the country slums are being torn down and replaced with new and better council housing. But the cost of higher living standards often means higher rents. The authorities who set the rent must face the possibility that the homes which they build to free people from the tyranny of the slum are imposing on them another tyranny - debt. The problem can affect all new council estates and new towns. When one third of a town is behind with the rent something must be wrong.
Tonight Man Alive is at Thamesmead for a filmed report by Jack Pizzey and an outside broadcast discussion chaired by Desmond Wilcox between the GLC, who collect the rents, and the people who live there and say, 'We like it, if only we could afford it.'