Housing and wage pressures in East London
Dame Meg Hillier, Labour MP for Hackney South and Shoreditch, says her constituents will be squeezed by pre-payment meters, benefit cuts, and rental costs
“People talk about Hackney as though it’s gentrified; they talk about Shoreditch hipsters. Actually, the poverty is visceral. One in two children live in poverty in Hackney.” Dame Meg Hillier runs through some of what she sees in her constituency: nearly 60 per cent in social housing; spiralling private rental costs; house prices at £750,000 for a new build two-bed flat, or £500,000 for ex-local authority; teenage children sharing a bed with their parents because there is nowhere else to sleep; constituents walking to her surgeries because they cannot afford the bus fare; choices about what brand of food to buy coming down to 14p margins for milk. “The cost of living is not a new problem,” Hillier says, but the dramatic rise in inflation and energy costs make it worse in a constituency where every penny and pound matters.
Specific concerns for Hillier include the higher costs of pre-payment meters (which many of her constituents use), the continued impact of the £20-aweek cut to Universal Credit, and the £200 government energy loan adding to constituents’ debt. In an area where many are reliant on small charities to provide after school activities and food for children, the rising energy costs may force those organisations, already on tight margins, to reduce their operations or close she warns, shutting off a vital lifeline.
It is not just a problem for the very poorest: Hillier tells of a local headteacher who left because the costs were too high to raise a family. It is a common quandary for public sector workers and middle managers across the area, whose wages have not risen in line with inflation: do they leave London and face higher commuting costs and a loss of community, or grin and bear the rents? “Those people who were perhaps treading water, if you put it generously, are now going to be really squeezed.”
“Those people who were perhaps treading water, if you put it generously, are now going to be really squeezed”