Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
I get this for free each morning, driving to work through suburban Oxford.
Hipsters: Scourge or Irrelevence
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I get this for free each morning, driving to work through suburban Oxford.
john eden
male pale and stale
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Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Well sufi suggested a couple of pages ago that the protest itself was a sort of hipster riot. And don't nobody hate white middle-class people quite like white middle-class people do. It's practically de-rigeur.
crofton
Well-known member
Reflecting on the last comment and on the one somewhere upthread about Berlin. When I moved to Neukoelln in 2008 the notorious gentrification had already begun but had not reached the heights that it did a couple of years later. The graffiti on my apartment building wall said "cleaner walls, higher rents". (The apartment itself was owned by an absentee landlord who I believe was an Indian guy from the west midlands.) My local bar had a big graffiti message on the wall outside that said "yuppiepack fuck off out of neukoelln". A couple of years later the bar down the road which I believe was Neukoelln's "original" hipster bar released its famous "offending the clientele" communiqué, concerning which you might be led to wonder whether it's actually intended to be ironic ... but I don't think it is.
Anyway, to my recollection, the most vocal opposition to the gentrification came from no one so much as the slightly earlier generation of gentrifiers. Why might this be?
Anyway, to my recollection, the most vocal opposition to the gentrification came from no one so much as the slightly earlier generation of gentrifiers. Why might this be?
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
I've noticed this a few times myself. People who appatently think it's a crying shame when the murder rate drops or an area acquires a shop that's not a pound shop/cheap offie/fried chicken joint.
The people who hold this opinion are generally not salt-of-the-earth born-n-bred cockneys themselves.
The people who hold this opinion are generally not salt-of-the-earth born-n-bred cockneys themselves.
luka
Well-known member
A lot of money came into the east end in the 90s, possibly European grants? and the changes that took place were almost all for the good. However that was before people started getting displaced... (00s onward)
I tend to think mixed income neighbourhoods are at least in theory a good thing. Pricing people out of their childhood home, probably less of a good thing
I tend to think mixed income neighbourhoods are at least in theory a good thing. Pricing people out of their childhood home, probably less of a good thing
john eden
male pale and stale
I think the new money in the 1990s went hand in hand with a conscious running down of housing estates by local councils.
Then you saw initiatives like "Decent Homes" in the noughties with its insistence on setting up of ALMOs and partnerships with housing associations so that repairs or renovation could be done.
Which basically amounted to a land grab - every partnership with a housing association or ALMO lead to social housing rather than council housing. Every regeneration project lead to a lower proportion of social housing on an estate as the new owners needed to recoup their investment through rent.
john eden
male pale and stale
Well, like everyone else on this thread, I wasn't there. But I will say that virtually everyone I have met who has been involved with Class War has been working class. Some of them are pensioners now, so I wouldn't exactly call them hipsters...
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
So they probably had beards and hats 'before it was cool', right?
john eden
male pale and stale
Well...
the original model for council housing was that the rental income was supposed to cover both repairs and crucially building new council housing.
This was undermined in the 1980s because of right to buy and generally by local councils spending the money on whatever they liked instead of the original plan.
So small things like broken windows, lights not working, graffiti, etc take longer and longer to clear up. Which creates the impression that nobody cares about the space, etc: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory
My impression is that by the 1990s many local authorities saw council housing and the rights of its tenants as a pain in the arse. My old estate in Stoke Newington was sold by Hackney Council to Southern Housing in the 90s - before I lived there. The "consultation" basically consisted of the council apologising for not doing very much and promising that Southern Housing would do better because they were all shiny and new and not the council.
Before the handover, the council decanted several dozen of its most troublesome tenants into one of the tower blocks on the estate. Which caused all sorts of hassle for years afterwards - and still does today.
To be fair, the housing association did regenerate the estate and it was better afterwards, but tenants gave away some of their rights for this to happen and sure enough the rents (and service charges for leaseholders) increased to pay for it all. The regeneration included demolishing some of the blocks and garages and replacing them with newbuilds which were a mixture of rent or buy - with the bare minimum of the social housing which was required by law.
So you end up with a more dense estate, none of which is council housing, and with proportionately less social housing to boot.
This also happened in the noughties in places like Haggerston West. Repairs not done for years, anti-social behaviour not tackled. The council eventually saying effectively that it was a terrible place to live and the only way to sort it out was through private investment. The consultation was about what sort of private investment people would have rather than if it was what they wanted. The estate was demolished and then rebuilt with the minimum of social (not council) housing. Most residents relocated because the building work would take several years.
Haggerston is within walking distance of trendy Dalston and the City of London so very desirable...
john eden
male pale and stale
That's fair enough - I don't know so much about Tower Hamlets. It does look like Tower Hamlets Homes was set up the same time as Hackney Homes, for the Decent Housing funds...
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
A lot of the towers near where I used to live around Bow have been quite drastically tarted up in the past few years. I thought a bunch of them were meant to have been torn down to make way for some shiny new development which should have been well underway, dunno if it's been delayed or cancelled or what.