5 years ago we bought our first house. We live in a very expensive town so to get a house rather than a flat meant buying an ex council house on a council estate where about 90% of the flats and houses are still council owned. It’s a small estate surrounded on each side by millionaires in a good location basically.
I didn’t think anything of buying on a council estate - I’m not a snob, I grew up and have lived in normal working/middle class suburbs and rub along with all sorts of people in life and when we viewed it seemed quiet and fine. However after 5 years of living here I absolutely hate it to the point where it’s making me ill.
Firstly there are some lovely people living here, this is not an attack on council tenants but the actual truth is that these are main issues:
teenagers outside my house all night screaming/drinking
dog shit everywhere
rubbish everywhere - think bins tipped over and not picked up, used nappies thrown in hedge etc
sofas/tvs dumped outside for months
screaming arguments/fights/regular police visits
music blasting all day
weed smoke continuously wafting in to my babies nursery if we open the window
young kids out til late swearing and shouting at passers by.
I am desperate to move but the house next door but one has been on the market for well over a year despite being nice and a bargain and no one’s biting. No one but us is stupid enough to buy here. If you picked up our house and put it on the street behind us you’d raise the price by around £100k basically and it would be sold within a week.
i feel so trapped and depressed everytime I walk through the estate to get home plus I feel totally stupid for buying it.
And I feel increasingly furious at these people who are literally costing us thousands of pounds because they can’t be bothered to pick up their shit.
Aaarrrggghhh!
AIBU?
To really regret buying on a council estate
Gameofmoans81 · 18/09/2022 09:03
Kerrrmieee · 18/09/2022 14:01
Maybe with your attitude - like attracts like.
I have a lovely council house - went through hell with 2 kids to get it. My neighbours are either elderly and have bought - and lovely to boot, or genuine hard working people who help each other out with anything.
Yours
A. Scumbag.
StridTheKiller · 18/09/2022 09:31
Having been a stau ch defender of council tennant type folk, then having spent 55 years living amongst them, they are, on the whole, horrible yobs, minor drug dealing, crashing cars, no consideration, dru k at all hours,spitting and every other word is fuck, just revolting scroates who repeatedly shitnon their own doorsteps. NEVER ever again!
StinkyWizzleteets · 18/09/2022 13:37
I live in a niace middle class very expensive area and I experience all the same things from drinking teens with nowhere else to go, to dogs shit in the street to rubbish all over the place. The problem isn’t that it’s a council estate.
what my neighbour has done is to try to create a community and it’s been brilliant. She started small and now gets funding and they do all manners of things for all ages & it is really starting to make a difference.
you’re always going to get arsehole teenagers being drunk and people not picking up dogshit but as soon as a few people show they care about where they live and are willing to make an effort to make it nice, inevitably others will join in. that won’t be everyone but it may be enough. You won’t be the only resident feeling that way.
CulturePigeon · 18/09/2022 15:24
Just a memo to those suggesting OP offers her house to the council - she's already tried that and they declined.
Yes, do move if you can, OP - whatever it takes. As others have said, it will all just be a memory eventually.
We bought a semi on a council estate and our neighbours were council tenants. Most of the other residents were great, but ours were dodgy (but not on the scale described in other posts, I admit). They threatened neighbours physically if asked politely to move a van which was parked inconsiderately. They gradually piled an entire fitted kitchen and 3-piece suite in their back garden (feet away from their wall and ours!), then chucked petrol on it one hot August day and let it burn terrifyingly for 2 days. No, you didn't go round and challenge them! One other memory, among many, was of finding that the woman had been up to the primary school and punched the Head several times over some issue.
They didn't even register on the scale compared to what some other PPs have described, though. They were moved on to another part of the county for their anti-social antics.
I'm interested to know if Beeswax and Caramel live/have lived under similar circs, or just like to fantasise about how the world operates? If you haven't been at the sharp end, you really need the humility to listed to those who have.
From a sociological pov, I'm interested to know what has happened, though. I'm guessing that 50/60 years ago, the average council estate wasn't a mire of anti-social ratbags. So what's happened? As said previously, so many people now seem absolute experts on their rights but will not accept any concomitant responsibilites... so how have they been allowed to think like that? I'd say that, far from preaching at us to Be Kind, a finger should have been wagged at these people long ago to tell them just what the deal was - and what was expected of them in return for being allocated a home. They have absolutely no fear of anyone, it seems. There just aren't consequences any more, and they know it??
Beseen22 · 18/09/2022 14:08
@MindYourBeeswax
Oh I had plenty compassion, baby sitting the little girl while her mum and step dad kicked the shit out of each other and calling her granny because she wasn't safe. Taking her mum in from the door step in a drunken stupor and getting her in the house safe. Giving my severely mentally unwell neighbour all of our leftovers because he had been let down so much by mental health services and was barely able to function.
But should my children not be able to play in the garden than I owned because every day there was drug paraphernalia thrown over the fence? Should we have to continually pay £200 a month to fix the communal door she kicked in every time she forgot her keys? Should we have to put ourselves at risk every day in the communal close squeezing past the type of men willing to pay someone for sex?
I was the biggest reverse snob in the world until I was actually in that situation and terrified to be in the house myself. I'm just thankful we took the hit and got out of that living situation. I'm heart broken that these people have often been born into these chaotic lifestyles and never had the opportunities I have but I have no interest in living beside them anymore because it was a massive stressor and risk to my family.
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