Brighton and Hove is a complex beast. Like many cities. Though Brighton, I think, really shows the extremes. I have friends in Hove with a family and they absolutely love it. There is a really community feel in some parts, some good independent shops and restaurants, different cultures; it’s arty and bohemian, it has music and good drinking places, and a beach and life. But it also has drugs and homelessness and crime. The beach is only accessed by crossing what is pretty much a major dual carriage way. It has independent shops but the high street is grim and struggling. It has some gorgeous period buildings, but so much of Brighton is a hideous concrete 1960s disaster. It’s beautiful in parts, and other bits are rubbish strewn and grim. Street parking is a nightmare and the multistorey car parks stink of piss and feel scary. Walk along the beach in the evening and it feels like Hollywood ( though good), with people skating and others making music and filled with vibrancy and excitement. But it’s filled with tourists and stag and hen dos too. It has desperate problems and poverty and yet has a strong, wonderfully liberal and caring community. It’s surrounded by glorious countryside and beautiful villages, but those towns and villages are filled with political divide. It’s on the commuter belt for London and so is a good opportunity for work and yet hideously expensive. The houses around Hove can be lovely, but it’s also got a slightly down at heel suburban feel of some of the less interesting parts of London like Wembley. It feels like a bubble and yet is very much symbolic of the rest of the UK at the moment. It’s London on sea in many ways.
I think to some the appeal lies in the mix. In the grim and concrete next to sea and Georgian gorgeousness. Personally, I wouldn’t want to live there. If I wanted such ugliness and squalor next to such beauty and fun and art and music, then I’d just go back to London. Or go somewhere else with a bit less traffic and concrete.
The mix thing can be good. Certainly we should celebrate different cultures and people. BUT, as someone who grew up in the poor East End of London and went to a rough school there, filled with poverty and immigrants who had just arrived from desperate places, I find that sort of middle-class, ‘it’s so cool being part of such a mixed area’, slightly condescending. I went to a cool art university, in a very rough art of London that was starting to attract an influx of well-educated middle classes, with family funded deposits and other family support, drawn (really) by the dirt cheap property. I remember our introductory lecture spoke of the ‘wonderful multicultural area, full of character and interest’, and the lecturer then went on to tell us that she had chosen to live in a tower block in the area to ‘really experience the vibrancy of the area’. It’s called poverty tourism and it’s awful. Now I don’t think every middle class professional in Brighton is like that, but there is certainly an element. You cannot experience something if you don’t live it. If you can close your door on it or drive off to the hills whenever you choose or hop on a train back to mummy and daddy in the Cotswolds. Eyes down and ignore the problems. Same with places like Margate in Kent. A small area filled with independent shops and galleries, but go 30 seconds down the road to Boots and the methadone queue is out the door. The trouble with areas that are gentrifying is that they don’t help anyone but those who can afford it, they just push the poor into smaller areas with fewer opportunities.
Brighton is great. But its also awful. In terms of your question though, your budget will get you sod all and it certainly won’t enable the rather lovely dream you have of living there. For one, Brighton and Hove is massive, and if you were able to find somewhere there it wouldn’t be anywhere near the things you loved about the place when you visited.