Londoners have absolutely decimated my city

[CrushedOrange]

NC as really outing.
I'm a musician and over the years I have seen what was a steady stream of londoners turn into a flood this year.
I'm so gutted. I know everybody has the right to live here but it has pushed so many of my friends out, artists and other musicians. It pisses me off that the whole reason these londoners moved here, they are also destroying.
I'm lucky as my landlord is really decent and hasn't put my rent up in years, so I can afford to stay here. But now I'm considering just leaving because of the vibe factor. It makes me really sad. I still gig a few times a week but the crowd is different. I miss my community, but now everybody is scattered as everyone who was pushed out has gone to different places.
I'm considering just jumping ship and moving on myself but I don't know where to go.
Today some more londoners moved into the street...The whole street is full of scaffolding as they seem to really love doing home improvements 😅
I know I sound really bitter. I guess I am. I don't know whether to stay or go, and of I go, where to?

I could say the same about the parochial backwater I lived in during my teens though.

Much prefer the significantly less bigoted vibe of London, despite a bit more graffiti.

London had working class communities in East London, for example, in the 60s, the sort of streets where everyone knew each other and kids played together in the roads, which since then have been taken over by high earning young professionals and so the roads most definitely have a different vibe. Camden similarly completely changed. But at the same time, London is incredibly multicultural now, a lot of cultures from around the world, east to west, working and living there, lots of vibes intermingling, which has a lot of charm in itself. Camden now - the Georgian terraces, you will find social housing tenants, posh lawyers, artists and musicians, all living next to each other in respectful harmony - that was the case in my old street anyway - it was lovely.

I know what you mean though, too. I don't live in the UK anymore, and we have an amazing city near us which has changed beyond recognition by people from the capital moving there since covid - any opera or concert or ballet or performance is now booked up within hours (used to be available up to last minute), the atmosphere at play areas has changed, everything feels more competitive, prices pushed up, scaffold everywhere - if it affects someone personally and it has happened quickly it is natural that they will be hacked off by it, so I understand what you mean.

Lots of the Londoners moving to where you are now will almost certainly not originally be from London incidentally - if you get to know them, you will probably find their parents are from all over the country and they moved to London with jobs after uni. Some may even be secret muso's!

Exactly

Yes, people always seem astonished when they ask where I was born and I say London. Mind you, at first sight people normally assume I'm Swedish or Danish, so they're partly surprised I'm even English I suppose.

people migrating into your area is a problem for you? How very Daily Mail.

I agree with OP in that the housing market in the UK is not working. But also - things change. Places and their demographics will always change over time, it’s simply the nature of things. My Mum grew up in working class Hackney in the 1960s and can’t believe how desirable and expensive the area is now.

OP also seems to have this bizarre idea that some kind of people are more ‘worthy’ than others when it comes to moving into a place. Creatives are best, but only true creatives, not sellouts. That’s not how society works. Who will make the coffee, clean the houses and do the accounts of all these amazing creatives who have chosen to grace an area with their presence? Yep, the rest of us living in that place with our bog standard jobs.

It definitely IS Bristol ... but I don't agree with the OP , as they are no doubt from Clifton or Stoke Bishop and extremely over-priveliged . Normal Bristol where , the ordinary folks with less money live , has not been afflicted in this way by London billionaires .

You missed out a significant one - immigration. There has been very significant immigration over the last few years and to pretend it has no impact on housing is to bury your head in the sand. Of course they have to live somewhere.

I was born there, my family moved to the sticks when I was a kid and I moved back in my twenties. Would the OP class me as a Londoner or not?

what IS a Londoner..?

This

It's really nothing new - my parents left London in the early 60's when I was a baby because they couldn't afford/find housing, I grew up by the coast in a seaside resort. Many residents had moved there from London.
I moved back to London in my early 20s and have been here ever since - but many of the 'residents' in my block only live here part time and don't contribute to the local community in a meaningful way.

OP told us - Brighton

Move to Cornwall OP I think you’d find your kind.

My friend is from London born and bred. She moved to our area years ago (I'm glad she did because she's a good friend and I'm glad I met her).

She chose to move away but several of her childhood friends were pretty much forced away. They're not wealthy. They're from working class backgrounds and didn't sell expensive London homes to buy up housing elsewhere. They had to move away just to be able to afford to rent.

From what my friend says, London social housing lists are very long. Years and years. Also many homeless Londoners are displaced out of London. Not by choice they're 'decimating' other towns.

Also it's true many of the 'Londoners' moving out now aren't, like my friend, originally from London. When my friend still lived in London, in the 90s, one Christmas she says she was the only one in her office who was just going a couple of stops on the London Underground to get to family. Everyone else was getting cross-country trains or flying abroad to visit family in their home towns.

Regarding the above. I'm quite sure the posters here who're deliberately ignoring this fact and persisting in saying things like 'London billionaires' are fully aware those billionaires are mostly not Londoners, and that the vast majority of Londoners aren't billionaires and many are on low wages.

I think my friend's right. A certain type of spiteful person simply loves to bash other people, and 'Londoner bashing' seems to be more tolerated than bashing of some other groups (I don't think bashing any groups is ok).

Blame the Chinese OP. I’m a central Londoner getting increasingly irritated at the influx of wealthy Chinese nationals. My only “beef” with them is they have more money than us and are happy to rent the overpriced apartments, this is making rents to sky rocket making London unaffordable to us Londoners, that’s why we’re moving out.

I hear ya pain OP, same page.

absolutely - won't welcome new arrivals😂

You'd be welcome in Birmingham we're very friendly, but please don't bring any arrogance with you. Our music scene doesn't need 'livening up' it's fantastic already.

In a country of 67 million people and scores of towns and cities, in what way is this post even remotely outing? 🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️

I'm in London and nobody who lives here can afford to buy because of all the foreign investors & multiple home owners. This is not just a picturesque town/seaside town problem, it's everywhere.

The government has to do something about it, there is a street 10 mins drive away which lies empty for 10 months of the year. Most of the owners live abroad & come during the summer to escape the heat of their own home countries. There's around 20/30 houses out of circulation which could be used by the normal population. These p/t owners have increased the value of houses because they pay in cash. Making homes even more inaccessible to the local population.

It’s usually the high minded creative types moving to poorer places that bring the “creative vibe”, open hipster coffee places and funky art galleries making the town/neighbourhood attractive enough, this makes the yuppies soon follow triplicating the square meter, it’s called gentrification. It’s people like the OP who made the town attractive for the London yuppies with her creative vibe hence she’s entitled to be pissed off.

This has got to be a joke 😂

There are also quite a few who moved further along the coast, like Hastings or Worthing. These places definitely don't match up, but I'm tempted to do that as am quite energised by the idea of trying to grow a new community, just trying to assess whether those places can be livened up though, or whether I will leave town to try and contribute to creating a vibe somewhere else, only for it not to take off and then I will have lost my LL here. Guess that's a risk you just have to take though!

Well aren't you the special one? Offering to 'bring up' the vibes of other lesser places, simply by your presence in the community. Lucky, lucky Hastings, is all I can say.

For what it's worth I think Brighton is a seedy, unpleasant shithole full of painfully self-absorbed, blue haired twats whose heads are so far up their own arses they can't even see what a festering pit of weirdness they've created. I honestly pity anyone who aspires to live in Brighton. You could not pay me enough money to live there.

I’m knew it was Brighton as soon as you said “vibe factor” 🤢

last time I was there I thought it was dirty, scruffy, and had a sort of heroin vibe. I don’t think it’s “Londoners” that have done that. Or ruined the Lanes. 🤷‍♀️

I totally understand OP.
Rents are shocking now, I could not have done what I did in my 20s if I were that age now.
The property market under years of Tory/faux Tory government is fucked.
I lived in Salford in my late teens in the 80s. I was in a bit of a shithole but it was £30 a week plus some bills. I was on a grant and had a pt bar job and was getting a tenner for doing a set at Band On The Wall.
Same area now is £1200 month for the same but new build apartment.
A lot of it is to do with the BBC Media City move to Manchester.