My town has really changed

[CatbellsOnTheSeashore]

In a confusing and not very pleasant way.

It was gradually changing for the worse before covid, but the pandemic seemed to accelerate it, and I am wondering if anyone else has noticed anything like this.

It became more insular whilst more populated, the population increased quite a bit over the past 5 yrs. More and more dereliction, low council maintenance and an influx of troubled people housed around the town centre, which is now a no-go zone. Areas surrounding have steadily grown worse also, as it seems to be spilling out.

What does feel really different is that there are now lots of groups of men, hanging around drinking or sat on pavements together (not begging). Drugs took over the local nature paths and canal walks so now there are large groups of people out of their heads lying on old sofas at the locks, it's really grim. Women who used to cycle and run in these areas have more or less moved elsewhere or stopped.

More and more standard sized houses in low to middle income areas are becoming HMO's, yet with poor refuse organisation and not enough parking. I'm not exaggerating when I say there are literally trails of dog shit in the streets in many areas, too, which pretty much hangs in the air and the place stinks. That, and skunk.

We live in a decent part of town but it is coming closer, and I only have that perk due to inheriting my parents bungalow. More and more people are moving out.

On a walk to Sainsbury's yesterday two guys were holding onto a sign pole hovering over a bin. As I passed by one of them vomited into the bin and then spat/gobbed an inch from my feet - he didn't notice me particularly, but it was quite sudden or I'd have given them a wide berth.
This isn't unusual now.

I know people usually blame the cost of living and covid, etc, but this was definitely on the rise before. There is far more noise pollution as more buildings go up, usually industrial, and the roads are a nightmare. Infrastructure for actual people is decreasing.
That said, I don't think most of these people were thriving before, so it isn't a sudden change. It is as if a new kind of culture is growing, that doesn't care a damn about anything. Everything is vandalised or shat on. More and more windows are broken in properties close to the town centre, and I doubt most of these people were thriving before the pandemic hit.

Is this bad luck or is anything like it happening elsewhere?
We are definitely looking to move away.

@Terrribletwos It depends whether drinking in public is against local bye laws. The police can not make up the law. They might be chatting to them as part of keeping an eye on them?

At a canal area close to Wigan town centre, there are a few private flats with grass and trees and sitting space around them.
Since covid the area (the locks particularly) has filled up with drug users and men sitting around on discarded sofa's in this green space. They are seen there most days with carrier bags full of booze, yelling and fighting and causing a racket.
I walked down there a few weeks ago and two men in front of me were visibly annoyed with me for being in the way. They watched me walk into the distance shaking their heads. It doesn't feel comfortable at all now, and this was such a highly frequented area previously for dog walkers, running and cycling.
It looks like a fucking war zone now.

Why they are filling up thiee spaces is something I can't figure out. Where were they before covid? These are long term addicts, not fresh from a job that fell through in the city.

All this will do is further impact young kids, make parents even ore disinclined to use green spaces locally, and put women off walking alone. Why they can't be shifted off is beyond me. And I imagine the council would only use their familiar old line "but there's nowhere else for them to go!"
Yeh, great, forget my own comfort and safety,...

It’s due to the increase in poverty. Poverty affects people mentally and physically in very predictable and not nice ways. It’s not a culture so much as a failure of our government.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-68625344

I do think that all of the points brought up in this thread are probably near the truth of the matter. Austerity,rampant individualism and consumerism,post covid apathy and the subsequent breaking of the social contract, mass illegal immigration of young single men from very poor and patriarchal cultures (which is different to planned immigration as that is generally a net positive), the greed that has widened the rich poor divide, and the shrinking of the middle class. Then the rise of the Internet (home shopping, people not socialising in the real world) and generally people not caring or taking responsibility because whilst a lot of these problems are structural, individuals still need to take responsibility.
Every generation has its challenges and this one is ours. Where we start though I do not know...

Is it since covid or is it since our last government slashed funding services and plunged the poorest furthest into poverty giving them even less hope ? 🤔

We’ve always had poverty. This is a new thing.

@CatbellsOnTheSeashore when this happened in an area of my City a few years ago the council removed the sofas.

Hmm. But have we had the biggest increase in absolute poverty in 30years?

That would be a new thing.

Yep, I know soft policing but it comes to a point (op mentioned this) where other members of the public stop using these spaces because they feel excluded or wary or unwelcome. And i am pretty sure drunk and disorderly or anti social behaviour is a crime in the uk.

Depends on your age I think. I remember a huge amount of real poverty. 🤷‍♀️

Most of these people I have just referred to were already addicts or struggling previously. Most from troubled families to begin with. They are likely generational issues. I do know that many were moved in from surrounding areas over the past 7 years, but sadly what can we do?
I have human empathy but I also need to feel safe and not end up affected mentally myself. Environment is so important to mental health.
I have no idea how we fix this, or if those concerned would even want to be a part of that.

Ok, but that doesn’t mean the biggest increase in absolute poverty in 30yrs happening NOW isn’t new and real.

reposting the BBC link
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-68625344

@Boomer55 Me too. But I am deeply disturbed that we are returning to the slum housing conditions and poverty of the past.

Same with Reading. I guess it didn’t have the best reputation but 10 or so years ago it was totally fine. For the most part it was safe enough with excellent transport links. It did the job. Sure, there were some areas you avoided driving through but it was easy enough to avoid the rougher parts. But now the bins are constantly overflowing, the council has given up on the graffiti and walking along the river at night alone as a woman feels somewhat unsafe. And bloody hell the smell of weed is everywhere!

I grew up in the ‘posh’ part of the town before it was gentrified. I rarely venture into the town centre these days. We usually make the drive to the nicer surrounding villages for meals out etc.

We are looking to move to the US where hubby could quite literally treble his salary. Not my preference but we are killing ourselves for a very poor quality of life.

I recently had a very mild medical issue and the GP couldn’t see me for three weeks. My private gp (telemedicine) wouldn’t give me medication without seeing me. It was terrible. Ended up paying privately for something extremely straight forward. Ridiculous.

We can blame labour and their "everyone must go to university" policy for the disrespect of trades.

Most of these people I have just referred to were already addicts or struggling previously. Most from troubled families to begin with. They are likely generational issues. I do know that many were moved in from surrounding areas over the past 7 years, but sadly what can we do?

How do you know this? Did you have trackers on them and their finances?

Not anti immigrant from me. Anti non selected immigrants.

Nor can dog poo be blamed on immigrants. No dog poo on pavements where I live. I was shocked at Brighton and Hove when I used to visit regularly though.

Exactly this. And they don't care as they would never set foot in our towns. Governments need to stand up to this and come up with decent plans to alleviate inequality. Tories practically encouraged the greed, and Labour is too scared to do it in any way that has an impact. Not one we will feel for years anyway.

My town has improved on the surface, but services are shot to shit. Housing is expensive, so the only people that really benefit are tourists or those who own lots of property. My LA are so desperate for the tourist pound and wealthy second home owners they have just let everyone who actually pays the taxes provide this slide into poverty. We do have Labour local govt now, but they were quite frankly handed a crock of shit with a pretty ribbon on, so I'm not hopeful. I would move away due to housing, but it is much worse in so many other places. Nowhere to move to.

Yes, trackers, that's right

So you don’t know and are assuming. 🍪

I have spent my whole life in the same small Essex town. When I was a kid, it was a sleepy market town. Today, it's a dirty, overcrowded warzone. The worst thing is the overcrowding. There are just too many people jammed into it. Like I said, it was originally a sleepy market town. In fact, even when I was a kid, in the 1990s, it still felt fairly peaceful. Today, it has the population of a small city. All around the outside disgusting new estates have mushroomed, with endless rabbit hutches jammed on top of one another. But no matter how many of these horrible boxes they build, we always need more, more, more. The traffic is horrendous as well, and I'm constantly woken by the screeching and backfiring of idiot boy racers. The woods near me have been hacked down to make way for a new estate, and a second estate is being built at the other end of the village. Now we've learned the fields in the centre of the village are going to be built on! We only need a couple of 'problem families' to be moved there and life is going to seriously deteriorate. It's a amazing how much misery and chaos one bad family can cause.

Because we're near London, county lines gangs have flooded the area with violence and drugs. I genuinely feel uncomfortable and out of place when I walk down the high street now. The police seem underfunded, overwhelmed and poorly motivated. They also seem frightened to arrest people. Part of the problem is lack of support from the general public, who treat them as the enemy. I blame the Tories for underfunding them, but I blame the left for encouraging people to treat them as 'oppressors'.

Housing instability has an impact. It is why council housing was introduced in the first place. If you have a transient population in an area they have no real incentive to care for the area and build a community.

The need for two incomes to run a home. There is nobody left to fuel a community through voluntary work.

Children being in childcare from babies. They don't learn about being part of a family and home skills at parents knees in the way they did.

Decline of high Street. Less people being out and about (more in workplaces?) mean shops get less footfall. Councils charging high rents for retail properties mean its cheaper to be online. This goes hand in hand with high parking charges in towns which discourage people from just popping by.

A breakdown of family connections, feeling like work doesn't pay yet two adults needing to work to struggle by and a population struggling with high housing costs. It doesn't make people charitable towards others or have pride in things.

Inequality is not a problem as long as you are growing the economy but the UK is in a recession is it not? Of course things will decline if you don’t actually produce much of anything and just want to hose the wealthy (which is not sustainable)

I don't think any government is interested in fixing this.
It's out of the way, to a point.
I recall the first rumblings of it in 2008 when I was living in a flat, the entire area seemed to go to hell over night - arson, gangs, drugs, etc. I moved out to the suburbs.
As far as we are/were aware, Wigan do often take on problem council tenants from surrounding wards, so from Leigh, etc, and there are a good amount of single person flats surrounding the town centre where most of the trouble now is.
It did feel very sudden, and spread outwards in a short time.

If you live in areas of Wigan such as Parbold or Orrell, UpHolland (my home) you may not see it if you spend most of your time at work or in the car, but I get to see a fair amount due to walking everywhere and using local trains.

It's happening everywhere. Huge increase in population but mostly just an increase in poverty.

Far too many people in the country and unskilled migration and single men being imported from everywhere.