I have a lot of experience living in council areas / ex-council vs private housing, as do my family & friends, so I guess you could say I'm lucky enough to know a lot about this topic.
If you want the short version: in ex-council estate areas it basically depends on your perceived social grade / education as to whether you fit in with the local neighbourhood. If you're perceived to be the same as them, you probably won't have any issues. Notice I say "perceived"; you could be the same as everyone else, but if they decide you're different, wealthy or more educated than them (even if you're not), you could have problems.
Now onto the more detailed version:
All the council & ex-council houses / areas I and my friends & family lived in all around the UK, suffered greatly from class prejudice or general small-mindedness & anti-social behaviour. If you appeared different to what they're used to in any way, there is a higher chance of them taking to dislike & making your life a nightmare, regardless of how friendly you are.
All of us are the most harmless people who shy away from conflict.
From all our personal experiences, people with standard southern accents living in the north of the UK were more susceptible to harassment or bad will, whatever form that happened to take. People who were perceived to be more educated (even if not actually more educated) were targeted by locals. Likewise, if you love gardening people can perceive a nice garden to mean you're more wealthy & you could end up targeted. This included anything from minor intolerance to violence or crime. Note that this was occasionally from neighbours who seemed harmless when moving in.
Things that wouldn't bother most people suddenly became an issue. Something as minor as planting shrubs in your garden could result in backlash from a neighbour because he "can't paint on both sides of the fence". Note that this wasn't simply one bad neighbour, but across the board in many areas.
You also tend to get targeted by criminals more when you stand out. For example, my son was frequently threatened simply because his accent, or clothes were different to what the locals were used to. It at one point was even just because subtle mannerisms they sensed were foreign. We tried being friendly but it back-fired, so did everything we could to keep out of everyone's way but it only got worse & worse.
In contrast, when my elderly parents visited, everyone was nice to them regardless of accent / clothes. It seems age had a big impact on perception.
Even in ex-council estates in the south suffer from this also. We were singled out because they had decided we were too "posh" for them just because we shop at Sainsburys (!) & don't have a cockney accent.
In a private house around the corner from social housing, my son was constantly targeted because he's "white" instead of black.. fortunately it was harmless verbal bullying.. in the end a couple of us were attacked by a random thug (who was white lol!).
Now, we also lived in private housing where the neighbours were relatively wealthy & mostly tradesmen such as plumbers / electricians etc. This is where it gets interesting. We were constantly targeted by the locals because they thought we're more "educated" than them. We had one of the oldest cars, the tiniest 2-bed house in the area & less money than anyone else in the area, but bizarrely we were perceived as "posh" & suffered a lot of harassment in public.
Insults were shouted at us across the road from random people like "posh f", "posh w" . We hoped it would calm down but after 2 years there, we were desperate to leave. My son would get targeted whenever he didn't wear a hoodie!
I should add that we all come from average backgrounds with no money in the family, no inheritance & work full time- my son had to get a huge student loan to go to uni & part-time work in a coffee shop as well! Our accents aren't posh, we speak similarly to Davina Mc Call, Holly Willoughby any other average speaking southerner.
Desperate to escape all this harassment, we eventually moved to a tiny cupboard sized place in west london & haven't had any problems since. Everyone is totally different here, in ethnicity, background..etc. the only consistency is that everyone is friendly & open minded (in doing research online it turns out the area is highly educated!).
We miss our old houses as the size was perfect for us, and to be honest we're struggling in our tiny place now but quality of life has increased SO much because no one gets targeted. The neighbours keep to themselves & don't harass anyone regardless of how different they look. Our foreign friends also don't experience any racism, which was rampant in all the other areas.
From all our personal experiences, the only thing we've managed to tie up to the problems, lower levels of education when you look on street check or zoopla neighbours check. It doesn't seem to be dependent on wealth/race/gender etc.
Strange as this is not what you might expect. You'd think more educated people might pre-judge the less educated, but in reality it seems to be the opposite.
I should add that we have friends from all walks of life & never pre-judge anyone.
So, the demographic in the good areas we've lived are mostly AB & C1. In the bad areas it was mostly C1, C2 & DE.
AB - Higher and intermediate managerial, administrative, or professional positions
C1 - Supervisory, clerical, and junior managerial/administrative/professional positions
C2 - Skilled manual workers
DE - Semi-skilled and unskilled manual workers; those on state benefit/unemployed, & lowest grade workers
If you look on street check or similar websites you can find out the type of employment / education of people in the street.
Before anyone starts calling me arrogant/snobbish, we never judged anyone in these places. We're really friendly people! This is just based on 25 years of experience of around 15 people- myself, family & friends, and we all reached the same conclusion.
Hope this helps to provide some insight.
