To really dislike the attitude some people have about council estates?

[MoominMantra]

Specifically this;

'I grew up on a council estate but I wanted to better myself'

Better yourself? What does that actually mean? I think people like this are insecure and suffer from internalised shame about their roots.

I was then told that because I didn't grow up on a council estate myself then I have no right to an opinion on this.

All I know is that it's deeply unpleasant to look down on others whatever the circumstances. It's not wrong to be happy living on a council estate is it.

AIBU?

I think there is still a real stigma surrounding council estates. When I was growing up our front door was stolen (nothing else, just the door) and the police would find it in various garages across the road. Apparently local kids had taken our door to be a game. 🤷🏽‍♀️

Any way my point is from that, is all I knew of council estates when I was growing up is that gangs of kids from there would rob shit. I assume that people who say they ‘bettered’ themselves probably came from estates like the one I lived opposite.

These days to live as a council tenant usually means getting heavily subsidised rent. By "bettering themself" I can only assume people are feeling proud they've been able to get a better paid job etc so that they can afford to reduce reliance on the state? Council housing is a great resource for those in need but society needs most people to support themselves in order to be able to afford to help those truly in need.

Also where I live the council estates have a lot of (non-financial) problems. Higher levels of substance abuse, truancy, crime generally. Of course this is not all tenants but it may mean for some people it's not the nicest place to live and they may aspire to something better?

you know you don't need a mortgage to pay a £12k house! 

It was quite a long time ago 🤔, probably around 1990. I also bought a house that someone had paid similar for in the past. I suspect that they did need a mortgage then. Go back another 18 years and my parents paid 8k for a naice, non council semi.

In terms of getting money you haven't worked for isn't that what inheritance is? I really find it hard to begrudge people one piece of luck.

In some ways yabu and in other ways not OP. I lived in an ex council house at one point (as above) but it was in a reasonable mixed area. We looked round another area and didn't get out of the car.....

I think you are being unreasonable. Who are you to say how people should feel who have grown up somewhere that they didn’t like and who want to live in a nicer environment? It is their reality, not yours. Whilst sticking up for the people who made the place they are living in a shit place to live, you are kind of criticising the people who had to put up with it. You can’t deny that some council estates are a bit grim and crime ridden and feel unsafe (not all of them, obviously) so who wouldn’t want to try to earn enough to move somewhere that feels safer if they can. I would respect someone who has worked hard to give their kids a nicer living environment than they had.

Some of the replies don't apply because you took your experience with one specific person with one specific set of circumstances and applied it to a whole range of people. You're doing the same as him but in reverse.
Him:people who live on council estates are lazy slobs.
You:people who have left council estates and think they have bettered themselves are snobby and judgemental.

people who have left council estates and think they have bettered themselves are snobby and judgemental.

That is not what I said. But I'm not going to keep on reinforcing what I did say. Because you can see that's not what I said.

He's not the only person with this attitude either. You've just chosen to think I know one person.

As previously mentioned, the word 'chav' wouldn't exist if poor people weren't marginalised.

Yes but there are people on here who say social housing should only be for those in severe need or who have problems
WHAT THE FUCK DID THEY THINK WAS GOING TO HAPPEN.

This is a REALLY good point. I often see on here that many people have the perception of council housing as being for the destitute and the troubled. It was never actually never meant for that. When my grandparents lived in a council house almost everybody who didnt own lived in one. Estates were just bog standard housing for workers.
People living on what would be considered bad estate now, back in the 60s they had decent jobs, cars, they went on holiday. Nobody thought they were "heavily subsidised" or should be grateful. Nobody called it "social housing". It was just housing!
After the 80s, when money from sale of houses was forbidden to be put into building new council houses, the housing supply became massively depleted, ending where we are now; in some areas only the people on the bottom rung, the ones being rehibilitated, with drug problems, with disfunctional families are housed.
This obviously creates sinks of poverty, despair and anti social behaviour.
It also creates this situation in which ordinary working class people resent those who are housed because they are their families are struggling with private rent and rising housing costs.
The tories knew what they were doing. They systematically turned decent, mixed estates into concentrations of the worst social problems going.
So really we DO need to break the stigma but that can only happen with a shit load more cheap housing available to everyone and thats never happening again.
Which is a shame because when you have a population who are safely housed you get decent communities and nice places to live.

Chav doesnt mean poor/working class. Chavs are not nessecarily poor!

My house is ex council but was council to start with would probably still be classed as a council as we started a family then i got my career...i totally agree ,i HATE that saying.Anyway half of these flimsy new builds bovis/permission etc whack up for a hefty price tag are made up of a lot of council tenants anyway..so i suppose they too are 'council estates'

I think sometimes the wording is a bit off but understand the sentiment. DHs service users largely come from what is essentially a large sink hole estate near to where he works; drugs, violence, poverty, gangs, your partner beats the living daylights out of you in the street and no one intervenes let alone calls the police (recent example). There are needles lying around, it doesn't feel safe during the day let alone at night, making more vulnerable residents housebound for a lot of the winter. Some of his service users say they want to better themselves and get off the estate for their children. What they mean it's they want skills/training/employment/rehab to enable them to get themselves and their children away from the horrendous circumstances they are living in, to give their children better opportunities in life. Personally I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

As previously mentioned, the word 'chav' wouldn't exist if poor people
weren't marginalised

Is this where the confusion lies? Chav doesn't mean poor, it never has. In fact you can be very wealthy and deemed a chav. It's not a financial judgement.

You keep referencing this one person. His views are not representative, people keep trying to tell you there is nothing wrong with wanting better as an adult than what you had as a kid if what you grew up with was bad. Even if it was good, there is nothing wrong with wishing you can afford your on house unlike your parents.

Of course generalisations aren't good, but this goes both ways he shouldn't generalise, but nor should you.

You are more guilty though, whatever he grew up with you cannot look back decades later and decide well it's a nice road now so hebis talking shite. You don't know what it was like for him.

If he says he wants better than he grew up with, fair enough, if he says he wants to be better than the people he grew up with, then he may also have reason for this, something he lived through that makes him feel this way.

Many of the people are care workers shop assistants, childminders who work in childcare settings like nurseries.

And mobile care workers. Those that keep saying that people should be able to fully support themselves are you willing to pay more for your childcare or relatives elderly care so the care workers and child carers dont need their rent "subsidised"

@IfNot Great post. I think you would find John Boughtons book an interesting read.

Thanks Helena I will have a look at it.

Wrt to the notion of subsidisation; as an almost ft working lone parent paying private rent I still needed to claim housing benefit. As a council tenant I didn't need it.

@Handsoffmysweets..........residulisation.

a post of mine from a thread elsewhere.

Social housing was for anyone who wanted it not people who were in a bad place. Patronizing and inaccurate to say it is just for people in a bad place. This is what turns housing estates into "ghettos" The book Municipal Dreams The Rise and Fall of Council Housing by John Boughton contains the history of social housing not the rewritten narrative that everyone has come to believe. It is residualisation that has stoked the belief that social housing is just for people in a bad place. But because of this we do get people with complex needs housed next to older tenants. Because of this, housing officers now seem to be operating a blanket policy of policing ALL tenants and acting in a paternalistic way towards them.,.......which makes the older tenants feel confused upset and angry at being targeted like this when they have done nothing wrong. Its all very well to say that social housing should only be for those in a very bad place Its very easy to say that when you are not another tenant who has to live next door to someone with a drug and alchohol problem. And you dont have a neighbour who stinks out YOUR home with their weed. Yes people with complex needs need to be housed. But in proper supported housing. That is what SHOULD happen, But a lot of housing associations are now getting rid of their wardens and have been for years To save money. This is why we have situations now where elderly tenants are housed in the same blocks as drug addicts. Addicts need proper support in the right environment and i will be damned if im going to sit by and watch OTHER tenants suffer because this is not being dealt with as it should be. I will also not keep quiet when people keep repeating the new narrative that is often spouted by the media , that social housing is/was only for the desperate and needy.

The thing is, in real life, I haven’t met a single person actually living in a council estate who doesn’t want to better themselves. I grew up in a horrid estate and still have friends who live there - everyone from the single mum who saves a couple of pounds a day so her son will one day have a nest-egg and be able to own his own home, right down to the disabled dad who works illegally in a fucking factory to put his kids through uni and have a better life than him. Living in a council estate should be temporary and people should be able to dream of and plan a way of getting out - when people feel stuck in an estate that’s when the problems start. Nobody with hope and dreams for the future becomes a drug addict.

Not all benefit claimants are feckless and rough Thats a stereotype

The last sentence of @Teddybear45 post shows that the reframing of the narrative and the welfarisation of social housing has been successful.

Now everyone who lives on an estate can be thought of as an addict regardless of whether they are or not just by dint of their address!!

Anything to prove a point hey @helenadove? If so maybe scroll up to the council estate tenants I actually know and mentioned.

Ive been living on the estate im on since 1994 Ive never touched drugs dont drink Ive never been drunk not once and in 46

your last sentence infers that people become addicts if they feel they are stuck Ive never felt stuck.

My problem has been with the blanket policy of policing ALL tenants by HAs due to the fact that there are some tenants here with drug problems They had those problems before coming to live on this estate.

I can understand why your friends are doing what they are doing Teddy

No-one aspires to live on a council estate.

I work for a local authority. The estates are where we see anti-social behaviour, crime and drug issues.

Obviously, most residents are fine, but many are not.

I work for a local authority. The estates are where we see anti-social behaviour, crime and drug issues

Because that is who you are allocating the flats to Thats what i got told by an MNer on another thread with the similar job.