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?

Yes, tbf that is a good solution.

Hilarious that my comment has been deleted 😂 according to my Mumsnet You Have Been Thanked email more than 65 people agreed with me!

@Goldenbear you misunderstood me, of course Londoners have been priced out & move out. But DFLs tend to fit a particular stereotype why to me is more of a Home Counties one.

Born in south London but moved down with parents as a young child, so not bred. I wouldn’t refer to myself as a Londoner and I’ve never lived there except as a small child, which obviously doesn’t count. I’m a proper carrot cruncher now.

I’ve just watched as the places I’ve spent half my life in have changed beyond all recognition, entire communities have been lost, hearing a proper London accent is now a rarity and my family have been pushed out further and further with each generation.

I agree about communities being lost and sadly not very financially diverse when the gentrification happens. London accents were quite varied (North and South in particular) but that isn’t the case anymore. Dismissing this qs irrelevant is actually the concerning part as there is no worries about the huge divides that come about as a result of these changes that are usually wealth orientated!

This thread is reminding me of the lockdown threads where posters were annoyed about all the “London” people heading up north for lockdown. Clearly a load of Londoners just decided to act out their very own Game of Thrones mission as opposed to a load of Londoners heading home to spend lockdown with family.

All of the kids in your village are staying local once they leave school, are they? No? Didn’t think so. Where do you think they’re all disappearing to?

I’m not going to engage in tit for tat about the merits of accents (mostly because a proper London accent is far superior) but I’m pretty sure you can’t tell a south London accent from an Essex accent. I’m also pretty sure that a couple of openly racist pensioners are no worse that the insidious sort of racism I’ve seen in your part of the world.

I agree about communities being lost and sadly not very financially diverse when the gentrification happens.

Theres been a dramatic change to the diversity of places I knew growing up vs now eg Brixton, Hackney, etc

I know, this is what I’m saying I was born and grew up in London, born in West London, DH was born and grew up in Camden. There is no way we could afford to rent there in mid 00s!

I'm still wondering what Londoners are expected to do?

There's numerous threads on here where someone can't afford housing in London. Not even rentals. People rush to tell them they shouldn't expect to stay where they're from and if they can't afford it to just move somewhere else.

Just this week I saw it. I was on a thread where a poster said only keyworkers should get social housing in London.

At the same time, if Londoners do what they're told and move somewhere else there's threads like this complaining about that.

So what do people want them to do?

Heading home so not Londoners at all. I don’t really understand how you can call yourself a Londoner if you were born and grew up in Manchester for example! I wouldn’t call myself a Glaswegian if I moved there at 20 and had a London accent (which I do but it isn’t the cockney accent which apparently is the only London accent Londoners can have)and grew up in London.

People moving from London to Brighton are not really the impoverished, you wouldn’t move to Brighton, well the parts I know of Londoners moving to, to gain an amazing advantage. Many parts of Brighton are more expensive than South London. Like London more of the problem is properties are owned by tax haven firms, holiday lets and Air BNBs.

My London born friend moved here (not Brighton) years ago. Perhaps things have changed in recent years but she says Brighton although not the cheapest place was less expensive than London.

Things change though and what happened to London (mass displacement because of housing unaffordability, partly due to things like tax haven owned empty properties) is now starting to happen elsewhere. It's a shame.

Also, perhaps relevant (I don't know?) is many of the 'Londoners' moving to Brighton are not originally from London. I mentioned earlier on this thread about one of DH's friends. He moved to London, then more recently moved to Brighton. He's not impoverished but not ultra wealthy either. He does own (with a mortgage) but he's not a massively high earner.

Alternatively, a Londoner is somebody who lives in and has made London their home, part of their identity and who contributes to their local London community regardless of whether they're from Peckham or Peru.

Thankfully most people seem to share this view, which is doubtless what has made London the most inclusive and welcoming place I know. I have friends here from all over the planet, and we are all Londoners 😊

I feel the same about my London born friend who moved to my town. She's been a welcome addition to our friendship group.

London can and is somewhere that is inclusive, welcoming and part of if peoples’ identity, by why is it important to be a Londoner, it seems strange to label yourself as such if your roots are somewhere else, like if you have a Scottish accent and call yourself a Londoner. I personally wouldn’t move to Dublin and refer to myself as a Dubliner (?).

I’ve lived in Brighton for 20 years but I wouldn’t refer to myself as a Brightonian.

How ‘inclusive’ is London when people who grew up there can’t afford to live there anymore and have been forced to move out or more generally people who just can’t afford to live in many parts of London, except the very which where once these areas were far more interesting and diverse in wealth and class? It is just not the case that London is inclusive anymore when large swathes of it are not!

I get that often people just want to stick the boot into people for daring to move to Clapham instead of staying in their former mining town with one Co-Op, but I don’t think it’s actually that controversial that the term “Londoner” is widely used in everyday speech to include both people who are from London, wherever they currently are, and those who currently live here, wherever they are from. Or, if you’re trying to stick the boot into people daring to move to Brighton/insert various Home Counties market towns here, those who did live here but are in the process of leaving.

None of this is to downplay the very real impact of the interplay of the housing crisis and job market on different communities throughout the UK, including but in no way limited to London, but people generally aren’t trying to trick anyone or pretend they are something they are not by using the term Londoner. There are very few equivalent terms for other towns because they have far less opportunities and people don’t move there in the same way, so nobody has bothered to come up with one.

I don’t really understand how you can be a Londoner if you weren’t born there.

I thought we were moving away from the concept of people having to be born somewhere to feel like they belong/are part of that community. It appears not.

It is like with immigrants. However much some try to integrate and assimilate, they will never be accepted as part of the local community by some.

I grew up in a northern town and had a shit home life. I came to university aged 18 in London, met my husband and had kids who have now left home. This is very much our city and I absolutely love it here.

It’s been a welcoming place, esp as I am not white and I feel at home here in the very diverse community. I feel 100% a Londoner after 35 years here. I don’t feel like I am from the north, I don’t feel ‘English’, I don’t really identify with my parents’ culture. But I definitely feel like a Londoner. Sorry if you don’t like it.

So it seems that people aren’t Londoners even if they have lived here for years and years. But if they then move from London to another place, they then become Londoners by infiltrating other areas and raising house prices. Is that right?!

65 that's got to be a record. It must have been perfectly cutting! Can you reword what you put within the MN guidelines?

I'd say most of these people are not native Londoners but failed, middle class, trust or Bomad funded, home counties types who've spent a decade or so in London after attending an Oxbridge reject university and have now decamped to the regions as property in and around the capital is too expensive.

We have moved away from having to be born somewhere to feel part of the community. People are part of the community they live in, irrespective of where they were born. They belong there all the time they want to be there. But they are not Londoners, in the same way that they wouldn’t become Geordies, Mancunians, Brummies, Dubliners etc if they moved to those places.

It’s not ‘like with immigrants’ at all. If they live in London, then London is their home and they are just as much a part of the community as anyone else. In fact, maybe slightly more part of the community as they don’t tend to fuck off out to the suburbs once they’ve made a few quid off the back of the housing markets in deprived areas. But again, they are people who live in London. Not Londoners.

It’s the best city in the world. It’s dirty and noisy and there is deprivation all over the shop. But it is beautiful and vibrant and multicultural and every single person living there contributes to that and is a vital part of that. But Londoners, whether they were born in Camberwell or Chelsea, are a distinct group and you can’t ‘feel’ your way into that.