Our cities are changing rapidly

 

Living in Hackney - one of the poorest boroughs in the country - since the early 90’s, it’s easy to reflect on incredible change in the area. I’ll be using this blog in part to do just that. From shifting attitudes to the ‘feckless’ unemployed, the impact of welfare reform and housing benefit changes alongside gentrification and an increase in a wealthier professional population.  It comes at you large. 

 

The other evening, J is chatting about a friend at school whose mum is holding down part time jobs while also ‘on benefits’. We talk about ‘scroungers’. J explains “She’s says she’s not a scrounger; she definitely isn’t – she works really hard and gets welfare. But when you ask her, she knows people who scrounge… some of them have parents who haven’t got a job, so it makes it difficult. Most are on anti-depressants. They get in a spiral of feeling they ‘can’t do anything’. Some are just lazy.” 

 

J pauses. “Though, the word 'lazy' makes you think of 'hopeless'. For some it feels hopeless. Just trying to find a job. Most of them don’t need clobbering, they need help finding work. That’s not happening now.” Another pause. “There should be a maximum wage – and with the savings made, you could top up the minimum wage and that would help make a job feel more worthwhile!”

 

Or H, who lives a few doors down, and is distraught. The new landlord has given them two months to quit.  “They’ve done the rooms in two – splitting the place up. They’re booting us out. I overheard one of them saying that a house up the road was divided into two and they got twice the amount for it. They want to sell it in time for the Olympics and make a mint. I’ve lived in this house 20 years. Where now? How can we stay round here?”

 

Or G, a child minder in Hackney Wick for 25 years, now working for what she calls ‘middleclass families’. She enjoys having children ‘who are less hard work’. “It’s a real change. The children are more ‘chatty’, they watch less TV, they show more imagination, are into storytelling. And its fun.” Where have the children from non-middle class homes gone? Moved out? Priced out? Pushed out?

 

The interiors of our cities are changing rapidly – from welfare benefits to shifting attitudes and fast track evictions to gentrification. 

 

In the remixing going on - stuck in, speaking out, getting involved, providing hospitality and all kinds of responses to poverty - are faith communities, the presence of churches and Christian groups. 

 

Church Urban Fund works with clergy, church leaders, community and youth workers - people living in, working to tackle poverty - to negotiate the complex, changing landscape, identify support, develop collaborations; to make the most of it and grow their own effective response to tackling poverty. So if that’s you - and you haven’t already - you need to join us. It could be just up your street.