Is this a council estate thing, and if so why?

[Fluorescentwater]

Growing up my parents owned our homes, and until recently I’ve been privately renting. I’ve visited plenty of friends and boyfriends on council estates growing up though, and it seems to be a bit of a pattern that the residents there have much laxer boundaries. People are often walking in and out of each others houses uninvited, having regular garden parties that the whole street’s invited to, lending each other money every week, cooking each other meals, looking after each others kids and generally just really involved in each others lives.

I’ve always wondered if this is specific to council estates as I’ve never noticed it in privately rented/owned areas, and if so does anyone know why it tends to happen that way?

Definitely not a council estate bashing thread. I’m just curious because I’ve been looking at home swapping recently and practically every home description includes ‘neighbours are all lovely and very chatty, it’s like one big family round here’. Most places I’ve lived everyone just keeps themselves to themselves, a smile and a nod and bringing neighbours bins back in if they’ve forgotten but nothing much more than that.

I was about to say the same. Community spirit!

Ive always worked with a client group who are predominantly from council estates and unfortunately I see more of the nastiness.

I always think when I see comments like 'we always look out for each other here' whether it be on the news after some awful tragedy or a thread like this. Unfortunately what is most often observed is that people are taking advantage of the most vulnerable residents, slagging each other off to social services, making allegations of each other, criticising each others life styles while living the same type of lifestyle etc.

I grew up on terraces like this then lived in a similar terrace until recently. Currently living in terraced housing that’s slightly less connected, but can still get a cup of milk etc if we run out.

I think this life style is often led by the kids. They go out to play with each other and then end up in and out of each others houses. Then parents form relationships. It’s always more connected during the summer when you’re in your garden etc

Perhaps it’s less common now because kids stay in to play on consoles. When I was a kid we were booted out early and just came in for dinner and tea.

When you have less, people need each other more, it’s a survival thing. The giving and taking of help forges strong bonds.

Having a lot of money makes your more independent of others, but it can also be isolating, you miss out on a lot.

Being underprivileged and struggling can also make you more compassionate towards others. Suffering can soften the heart. It’s the silver lining for having less.

This is a good point. My experience is 80/90s council estate. I think maybe there is more moving around now. When I was a kid often extended families lived close to each other and families took over their elderly relatives houses when they passed on. Council/LA housing being much scarer
now and the bedroom tax etc have probably changed it since then

This. On our estate, a disagreement usually ends up with police attending and potentially a broken window or two. The whole 'community' thing looks cosy from the outside but is totally dysfunctional.

The gossiping is a sight to behold too 😅

@Weallgottachangesometime

Yes they are not the same. When I was a kid we got all of the cosy benefits of living on a council estate. Genuinely tight knit. Really, really wonderful days. We were all a bit poor but crime was low. No one faught. Now you do have this but in smaller pockets. Less community and much more crime. You can tell the people who work on council estates because they are worlds apart from the ones who don’t. Their lives are full of dysfunction, substance abuse and crime etc. So even on modern day council estates there is a sense of “us and them”. Thankfully on my road we are all decent. Not the same everywhere on this estate though and it’s pot luck. (I live in a council house but my neighbour owns his because he bought it).

1st - why would you look at homeswsapp if you don’t live in social housing and can’t swapp your rented flat

2nd - Since I came to the UK 17 years ago, I’ve lived in various council estates all over the place, at first privately renting and now as a council tenant, and I never EVER experienced what you describe - I can only tell you the name of one neighbour and that is because I knew her from somewhere else years before I moved here - don’t know her flat number though

It must be me of course - I would hate to have that kind of closesness you describe regardless where I live.

When my dad was in his late teens (late 1930s, pre war), he went to live with with one of his older sisters and her family when his mam died. Council estate.
I remember him telling me that he came home from work one day to find the house virtually empty. Of furniture, etc.
It turned out that there'd been a funeral in the street, and the neighbours had all got together to help out for the 'funeral tea'. His sister among them.
Tables, chairs, curtains, rugs, china and cutlery had been 'loaned' by the entire street to make the home of the bereaved family look 'decent' for the funeral.
Apparently this wasn't unusual at all. I was born in the late 50s and l'd never heard anything like it, but we lived in streets like Coronation Street, not on an estate. I thought it was so kind and generous of the people who helped out.

I think this is more like it.

This is an owner-occupied road in the south east.

We're still the "newbies" in our bit of our road and we've been here 21 years! We're a really close-knit community. It's lovely.

I think it probably depends on where you live, certainly there are no street parties or people going in and out of houses on here. I only say Good Morning to probably half the houses on the cul de sac and I'd say that's pretty much the same for everybody.
On the other estate though it is much more like OP describes. The houses are coal board houses so there are extended families all living in close proximity. Everyone knows everybody else, families marry into families and so there is a good chance that your neighbour is some relation to someone in your extended family.

I grew up in council flats on an estate . Every one looked after each others children because there was no real childcare and mums usually had pt jobs. Nobody walked in and out of houses though everybody knocked.

I noticed that with my school friends, who lived on council estates. We knew our neighbours vaguely, but never in the same way my friends did. When a big football match happened their communities cave together, in a way ours did not. They also had relatives very close.

Nope.

@Toddlerteaplease

Yes I had my two nans, my two uncles and 1 auntie on the same block. All within 1-2 minutes walking distance. I never needed permission to stay over their houses (lots of cousins). I was quite phobic of being sick as a child so if anyone of my siblings had a sick bug I would pack a bag and leave home for the week 😂. I also used to just randomly pop by for tea, biscuits and dinner etc. Mine and my cousins lives have all gone in different directions as adults. Some still live there, some don’t, some have moved out of the city. What remains though is we are still all really close. I absolutely love my cousins. ♥️

Not round here, though I'm pretty sure most of the houses are privately owned now (including ours)

The kids do play out together though which is nice

Community cohesion isn't it
I very much like the supportive element and would help any of my close neighbours but I like firm boundaries and closed doors at the same time thank you very much

Not necessarily a Council "estate" but maybe rental zones, if you like - whether social or private lets.....
Chances are they are all related, one way or another.

I grew up in a rural village, a mix of working and middle class houses but not a council state and most people owned, it was very similar to what you describe. Lots of families with kids and we all went to the village school and youth club etc, everyone used the same village shop, one village pub everybody went to so everybody knew everybody. As kids we were always in and out of each others houses and gardens so I don’t think these kind of communities are isolated to council estates, it’s probably more about having lots of families and people leading similar lifestyles together. In council estates where all of the houses have 3-4 bedrooms older people probably end up moving out as soon as their kids move out so the area stays full of young families compared to in places where people buy and stay into retirement or where people end up renting to students or professionals etc.

Some good points, it probably is a mixture of having lived there a long time, having a lot of family about and being poorer so stuck at home bored more. It’s probably to do with the way people are raised too, as I imagine children who’s parents placed more emphasis on politeness and manners would grow up more wary of crossing peoples boundaries, and those with more relaxed parents would grow up with more relaxed boundaries.

For me personally it would be hell to be involved in one of these groups as my home is my safe space and I don’t like to shit where I eat, as the saying goes, but I’m well aware that others may be more extroverted and really enjoy it. I do find it really nice though, especially if it helps those who’d otherwise really struggle.

@Fluorescentwater

If your door is shut and locked then people won’t barge in it’s not a free for all.

I don’t think anyone has mentioned anything about people barging through their door?

It's interesting because when they (town planners, council workers I assume?) did the slum clearance and moved people out of the tenements and slums into the very first council estates in the 1950s and 60s, one of the big criticisms/problems with that was that there was no attention paid to keeping groups of neighbours together. So you had these suppprt groups that had existed for generations just broken apart and people really suffered and struggled due to it. Many became really isolated because they were separated from bonds that were like family, and of course it wasn't easy to stay in touch - it was before many people had home telephones, and letters would have been expensive as well as in many cases not having addresses for people who had been moved. But even if they had been able to keep in touch, imagine your entire support network, your childcare, your confidantes your friends, that you saw daily suddenly being miles away in another borough, probably several bus rides away. It would seem incredibly lonely.

It's nice, actually, to hear that those support networks grew up again at least in some of the council estates. And interesting (again) to note that this was about 15 years ago I was being taught this at university, and there was no hint that support networks had grown up again on "new" estates! That might well have been because the info was itself about 5-10 years old by the time I was learning it, so the estates would have only been around 40 years old at the time of that research - about one, maybe two generations - estates will now be 3-4 generations old. Or it could be that the story I heard at university was not from working class voices, but a middle class interpretation of the situation.

Anyway, I do think multi-generational living and dying in the same house or same groups of houses will feed into this, and so does lower incomes, because if you can't just jump in the car without thinking to go and see your family/friends then you'll be more reliant/willing to socialise locally, and I think most people are fundamentally quite decent and if they know somebody is likely to be struggling, they will naturally want to help out. In areas where housing is an asset that people own, they tend to have more money and can afford to travel further to visit friends/family, people move around because they have the means to, so don't get as attached/entrenched in an area, and we all tend to assume our neighbours are doing alright and likely to be able to solve their own problems financially.

Because housing is aspirational in the UK, these assumptions and patterns are all present even when people are renters rather than owners, particularly where an area is comprised of a mix of rental and owner-occupied properties. That's just a guess from a sociology viewpoint really.

It must be to do with staying in one place a long time. The council ‘estate’ (group of houses) in the village I work in houses a bunch of really close and supportive families. Their children really look out for each other at the village school (I teach there).

However, we live in a cul de sac of houses around in a central green in the next village along and it’s really similar, despite being all owner-occupied. I think again it’s due to most of the residents having grown up locally, like my DH. So maybe it’s a permanency thing.