To feel so sad about what happened to our town?

[AbstractThought]

I wasn't born here, DH was, and I have seen it discussed on MN in the past. I am aware that many towns across the UK are in a similar situation, so this probably isn't anything special, but since most people talk about shop closures I wanted to look at it from a different angle.

In the past decade we have a ton more issues in the town than previously, often relating to homelessness and addiction, and the town centre, what's left of it, has become completely over run by these problems with groups of people fighting and street drinking. A lot of these people are in extreme difficulty, whether mental health related and/or drug issues. Crime shot through the roof, and even about 8 streets away from this it spills outwards to us in what was once a fairly quiet place to live.
We now have a constant stream of siren noise, day and night, helicopters are daily and whilst we personally haven't felt in any actual danger there is a horrible sense of decay and hopelessness. Just nipping to the closest supermarket is depressing, there are a lot of neglected animals and people having meltdowns in the streets.

It is how it changed so quickly though. I can't get my head around where it all started or why. I am aware of the contribution of politics, covid, all of that stuff, but it seems so incredibly extreme. The siren noise is the worst, it is piercing and never seems to end. This also seemed to explode around the same time as the area went downhill. Probably a mix of police and emergency vehicles. It is difficult to work or relax at home and if you are a light sleeper it can have an impact there too.

What I am wondering is if this is commonplace now, in what was once a thriving town? It is the sheer amount of troubled people which seems to have escalated the most, and I can't get my head around how this has evolved, in such a short space of time. It is like they weren't here, then suddenly appeared, it is difficult to describe it. Obviously the council can't do a great deal to help and I have no idea what the answer is. The most upsetting thing is that a lot of these people are so messed up that they can barely talk in a way that is decipherable. This includes children, and there is a growing amount of people who have barely any teeth. This is a fucking severe problem and I have no idea what will help it. We have mucked in with a few local charities but it barely scratches the surface in my opinion.
We are moving due to work relocation soon, so whilst it may not be 'our' problem after we have gone, this isn't the point. I am just so sorry that it has come to this, in likely even more places than just here. WTF happened??

I was in the US recently and I can I ly think we're emulating their ‘model’. A two tier system. Rich and poor. Rich people seemed quite happy to be dropped off at the doors of A fancy restaurant and more less step over the street beggars so go and spend extortionate amounts on food and drink!

There is no real concern for people who are seen not to be ‘trying’ hard enough and following the American Dream. The drive to cut and cut and cut again public services is leading towards a similar wealth and health divide here.

Things have been slowly going downhill since v the sixties and has now accelerated made worse by people buying everything on the Internet and high rates. Police - where are they ? There are more per person than in the fifties but nowhere to be seen and havent bothered enforcing drug laws for years so this is the end result. They used to stick any drunks on the street in cells haven't done for years. Breakdown of families, high cost of housing, general disrespect the list goes on. Nothing to do with austerity.

Our local town is fine,it has the usual empty shops and preponderance of charity shops and coffee shops,but I've never felt unsafe there,and there are none of the other problems described on this thread.
The nearest city is another matter though. I used to work there about 30 years ago and it was a lovely place,clean,safe,even coming out of nightclubs in the early hours wasn't worrying.
I had to go there a few weeks ago,and found it very unpleasant. It was dirty,run down,beggars,junkies and mentally unwell people all milling about shouting at each other,whilst food delivery bikers wove through the chaos. It felt like another planet and very threatening,and this was 3pm on a weekday. Whilst I was waiting for my appointment,two other ladies came in and both were discussing how horrible the city centre was and how scary they found it,so it wasn't just me.

There's definitely a sort of permissiveness here though, in the worst parts of town, which I have come to understand through voluntary work, the roughest and most violent rule the streets. There doesn't seem to be any real acknowledgment of this by local government. It used to exist in pockets that most of us never saw until it spread out in recent years.

Most of our nature areas and footpaths are destroyed by off road bikes now, the council won't even bother locking the gates that stopped vehicles gaining access. We have a small nature reserve that keeps getting set on fire. Benches in the area are chained together by their feet, it's just so depressing. No police presence at all. There's this feeling that no authority cares.

In my line of work I see a lot of the kind of people you’re talking about. No job or fixed address, hooked on drink or drugs, just coasting about every day doing petty crime to feed their addictions and hanging out with other people living similar lifestyles.

I hate to sound defeatist but there’s literally nothing you can do to help them. Their minds are usually too addled to be able to engage in any kind of rehabilitation - after years of addiction the brain undergoes physical and irreversible changes. They barely know what day of the week it is, you could spend £££ and go down every avenue trying to get them better but they never will.

So I don’t feel any guilt in wanting to live as far away from people like this as possible, or not giving them money (which would be spent on their addiction).

I think what I am trying to say is that it feels as though all authorities have turned a blind eye, so that non-destructive people are either driven out of the area or just stay indoors. It feels like the destructive people have become a dominant force. No matter how much human sympathy you have, it is difficult to witness this kind of depravity so often. It has a real impact. The local culture feels aggressive, and the only businesses that survive cater to them.
The ownership of dangerous dogs has risen also, I had imagined for a while that they were all rescues, but I am probably mistaken:(

My small city is getting worse and worse. I personally believe, that there will need to be more drastic measures including legal provisions for mandated treatment for addictions and mental health. We cannot allow people who cannot keep themselves or others safe to terrorize public spaces and put others at risk. Being sorry for people is not a plan and letting people dye in their own piss and shit is not freedom.

There need to be robust barrier free mental health and addictions support. Supportive housing initiatives and work programs/opportunities that can bring people who have dropped off a societal cliff back into the fold.

I grew up in one of the most deprived areas of the UK, on a notorious housing estate , in an area devastated by pit/ industry closures and the subsequent high unemployment rates.
All of what we’re seeing now in the town centres was life on our estate from the late 70s onwards. Drug (heroin then) addiction, generational poverty, abuse, riots.
Young lives lost to glue sniffing, solvent abuse, vandalism , crime. It’s what happens when people live in desperation. It used to be confined to some extent to isolated areas like mine, now it’s simply everywhere.
The worst part now is that the drugs are cheaper , social services diminished, and living costs sky high.

Our town is the same, it wasn't like this when I was a kid 10-15 years ago! (I'm 27 now) it's sad really.

We live on the coast near Newcastle and it's still a good place to live. Newcastle itself is increasingly run-down. I am so sad to see what has happened to it. It was a vibrant city 15 years ago with an extensive range of shopping and felt really 'on the up' in the late 1990s to 2010 ish. Now so many shops are closed, including in the big shopping centre- Eldon Square- and the big shopping Streets. Northumberland Street is really run-down with empty stores and lots of 'cheap tat' shops that open and close quickly and sell rubbish. Most shops now are food places; cheap eats, takeaway crap, horrible cheap shop fronts, foreign 'nail bars' and Turkish barbers- they are all empty most of the time. I work in New astle for a day most weeks and am shocked by the druggies and drunks on the streets at 8am, sitting on blankets, lying in doorways, standing in groups, begging, staggering around. They are incomprehensible a lot of the time, filthy, have terrible teeth. Some of their behaviour is appalling - particularly youngish men. There were a group of 5 of them this week shouting abuse at passing women. Every single time I get on the metro train in the town, there are rough people behaving badly- usually couples in their 20s-40s who look like addicts of some kind and start arguing with each other then being rude to other passengers, or teenagers with anti-social behaviour- they get on and off in poor, run-down areas like Byker, Walkergate,Wallsend, North Shields, Meadow Well , Longbenton, Shiremoor. It can be really uncomfortable.
The buses are more used by pensioners who look really really poor.
Often the Metro is out of service because of staff sickness or broken down trains, or vandalism, or repairs. It has become unreliable and very expensive.
The damage that has been done to our communities is huge I think.
Local councils have no money for investment now and accept rubbish solutions- so Newcastle City Council are planning to allow a terrible eyesore of a square built in the 1970s to become a 'street-food' area. It is a dump. The city is full of cheap eats that are empty all day. It needs demolishing and something much better building but that would cost money they don't have. There ste too many bars, hotels and empty office blocks.
Newcastle is a stunningly beautiful city - a core of absolutely gorgeous Georgian streets and, a much older beautiful 'old town' down towards the quayside and river. So much of it is now just empty and shabby. It's really sad. There has been no investment in the north-east in the last 15 years- it has been stripped of money at every level and opportunity oby this Tory government.

Same where I'm from......it's always been a but rough around the edges but nothing like this. The town centre has become a no go zone, for the first time ever we've had street homeless.....obviously there's always been homeless people but nothing the local shelter couldn't deal with, hell I remember someone finding out there was a woman living in the shed on her allotment as she had nowhere to go, it was front page of our local paper and the council had her in a flat within a week ! And that was only 10 or so years ago.

Now we have tents everywhere, something I'd only previously seen in cities. The majority I'd say are extremely mentally unwell. One man spends his day shouting at the radio he keeps with him. It seemed to happen overnight around 2 years ago and has become steadily worse since. Fuck knows what the answer is, I know things shouldn't have been allowed to get as bad as they have and that constantly snipping at services has had a domino effect.

I agree.

As I said I work in this area and see a LOT of the kind of people you are talking about, and in most cases they are not ‘vulnerable’ - they’re aggressive, intimidating and care nothing for anyone but themselves. It’s quite soul destroying seeing the money ploughed into trying to help them, only for them to not engage with any support offered and simply carry on. They’re a black hole of ‘need’ and very very very very few ever go on to live a remotely productive life. The justice system, A&E, the benefits system, police - they exhaust public services and merely keeping them alive costs a fortune. And in return, as you say they make our towns and cities a destructive or oppressive place to be.

You are but not in the way you think. America has plenty of space for normal people to move away from chaos and dysfunction; Britain does not have this advantage. It is maybe the endpoint of individualist societies if the individual is unable or unwilling to control themselves

If you focus on it (which I can't for too long) it makes me feel dread for the future. How do we rise out of this in the UK? I fear it becoming worse in many places for the time being.

There is only one thing we can do to reverse it and it would involve curtailing the human rights of about 5% of the population, so it will never happen.

But in what way?
A robust and fair welfare system is a godsend, and provided excellent opportunities to assist people with access to health, education and better housing after WW2. True, we have a much higher population and a completely different culture now, but how on earth do you go about deciding who is deserving?

I agree with the pp who mentioned the US having much more space and opportunity to move around and seek work/ avoid dysfunction. Many people are nestled in terrible areas in the UK, decent people who work hard but can't quite afford a way out.

Because the welfare system now simply props up people’s chaotic lifestyles and enables their addictions. It also means they can just continue to have children, as many as they want, knowing the state will ultimately look after them.

However the children shouldn’t be punished. So arguably the only thing you could do it stop the feckless having children, but many people see their bodily rights as above those of their neglected would-be children so as I said, it won’t happen

I’m not sure mopeds and delivery drivers are the same as crack addicts and deprivation on every corner.

All the anti-car councils have helped to ruin town and city centres. People just drive to out of town retail parks and supermarkets that offer free and easy parking and are usually on better less congested roads. That caused lots of town centre businesses to become no longer viable, hence them closing down and leaving empty/derelict shops and letting the dross take over, thus making them even less attractive for shops and shoppers.

The "cafe culture" idea for town centres may work in the few places with exceptional public transport but in the vast majority of towns and small cities with crap public transport, it's just led to huge numbers of people basically boycotting the town centres in favour of out of town alternatives. Add in online shopping and there's even less reason for "normal" people to go into town centres.

No, but they likewise make the town centre unpleasant to go to when you're wary of being run over in a shopping centre or pedestrianised street. Just one more reason not to bother and shop elsewhere.

I know what you mean. I feel genuine sadness when I remember the bustling town centre and markets at a weekend - now it’s just endless rows of money laundering vape shops Turkish barbers and nail salons and pound shops. It all just adds to the feeling that life just got a bit shitter.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p07nn4xq/addicted-americas-opioid-crisis

1 in 8 kids in the USA have a parent who uses opioids, many get addicted via prescription drugs.

There's a good docu about Nan Goldin where a pharmaceutical company (Purdue) is put under pressure to admit to a man made epidemic.

That's one factor, UK politics have obviously been instrumental.

So many people can't get to see a dentist unless it is private. We are going back to medieval mouths for the poor.

When are we going to rebel?

I live in Essex and it sounds like the town I live in boarded up shops, weed smoking in the streets, the food bank is the busiest place In the town

It's like we're now living in the dystopia that was depicted in the films we watched in the 80s/90s.

There's also not a lot of public discourse about those whose lives are scarred by having to witness these things. We place a lot of focus on poverty and crime (and rightly so) but having seen how quickly this evolved in our town has left us fairly bruised, psychologically. I am a nervous wreck about our pending house move, wary of new places in case they follow the same trajectory. I think it also causes depression if you stick around in this kind of atmosphere for long enough.
I see towns becoming ghettoised, those who can making an escape. Those who can't leave suffering diminished mental health just by dint of being exposed to it.