Cyclemonkey

Strafer - just looked, an annual Zone 1-6 travel card is over ?2000 so getting a travel card to travel from the edges of London to the centre does indeed run into the thousands. A bus pass is around ?700 annually but travelling by bus every day form the edges to the centre is a fairly tortuous business. I go to work by bus but Peckham to the City is a bit different than Bromley or Thmaesmead to the city. Also i expect there are no interest free season ticket loans for many low waged people as well.

I know many minimum wage workers live in the outer reaches of zone 6, i was mainly talkign about people commuting in form areas outside London. However even Zone 6 is a push on minimum wage in London - In 2000 I commuted from just outside Zone 6 to a job in Farringdon for six months after i graduated and it was punishing - i had to get up at 5.45am to get to work for 8.30am and i paid ?270 a month for a monthly railcard with tube zones. I was on ?16,000 a year and my rent at the time was ?275 a month to live in a ramshackle Victorian house shared with 5 mates. It was fine at 21, i'm not sure i'd want to do it at 36. In the end i moved to New Cross as i calculated that the saving on travel would more than pay for the rent increase.

Commuting is mainly a middle class luxury. Imagine you do a minimum wage job such as cleaning, bar work or catering. Many of them are anti social hours - starting at 4am or finishing at 2am. You hourly rate is say ?8 p/H (that's over minimum wage) say you worked a 35 hour week - that's ?280 a week before tax - that's around ?14,800 a year before tax - given that annual season tickets from the home counties run into several thousands a year for a service that many people doing these jobs will not be able to use (name me a train that runs from the Kent commuter belt that arrives in Central London for 4am or indeed takes you back again at 2am) you can immediately begin to see why commuting does not work for those doing many low paid minimum wage jobs.

Interesting stuff Miga. It is also interesting the difference that changes in housing tenure have had. Both my partner and I cannot afford to live where we grew up (me a small village in Kent, him Central London) Our parents are not rich or indeed home owners but had secure, long term rented accomodation related to their professions. Something that is vanishingly rare. Both our Dads tell us they don't know why we don't rent like they have to which the retort is perhaps we would if we had long term tenancies with controlled rents where we got to chose the decor. As it is this sort of thing does not really exist in the private sector anymore.

miga - i can answer your question there. A friend of mine and her partner are looking at Catford at the moment. They both have decently paid jobs abopve the national average (she is a higher rate tax payer) and they have a ?40,000 deposit. They are struggling to get even a 2 bed flat as they are constantly outbid on the ones they can afford.

It's a shame the second hand shop is going - i got a really good bookcase and two chairs there recently. East Dulwich Deli i can live without. Blackbird do nicer cakes, bread and savouries and Bambuni do better quality and better priced deli items.

Jeremy, It's not about being able to afford to live ina specific area - it's about being able to afford to live anywhere in your locality. I agree with you not everyone has the right to afford a double fronted period house in Bellenden Road but there should be mixes of housing for everyone. Too often now when i look at modest flats in the local area (by that i mean Forest Hill, Honor Oak, Peckham, Nunhead, New Cross, Catford etc..etc..) it is advertised as "ideal buy to let investment" and priced as such that you would need at least ?30,000 for a 10% deposit and a household income of over ?50,000 to get a mortgage. People want stability which is why they look at buying. Maybe people would be less concerned if renting was a viable alternative. Council housing is virtually impossible to come buy and private renting long term is frustrating, expensive and unstable.

The garage is mad but i suspect it is the land the buyer is interested not the garage. I assume they were given a good tip from the council (the vendor) that palnnign permission for aa new building was likely. It's true there is some good ex LA stock locally but you'll struggle to get much under ?300,000 even then. Believe me, we've been looking and we've not that tied to a postcode nor do we want a period conversion on Cystal Palace road. I viewed a three bedroom Ex LA place in Nunhead on at ?300,000 that woudl need a good ?30,000 inviested to make it habitable (it had no internal doors, a broken boiler, no carpets , a bathroom suite that was stained beyond use) A couple with 10% deposit and an average household income would struggle to afford that.

It doesn't but it makes aspects of society harder. Children no longer around to care for ageing relatives, grandparents not around to help with childcare, communities losing their roots. Healthy communities are a mix of old and young, rich and poor. The village i grew up in is very sad now. 150 houses and it is all second homes and older residents. There are no children left.

It's been happening for years all over the South East. I cannot afford to live in the Kent village i grew up in. House prices are not as mad as London but at least here in London i can get a well paid job. My partner was born and bred in central London, he and his family have progressively been pushed further and further out. We rent in SE15 at the moment (an area i moved to in 2000 as a young graduate cos it was all i could afford) but we will have to move on soon if house prices and even rents climb any higher.

My gosh that Bellenden Road house is ridiculously priced - it's currently uninhabitable. I would imagine the market would be serious property investors who will drive a hard bargain with the owners. BB100 i disagree about Shared Ownership, i just think it has been poorly marketed. I have had friends who have used it as a means to get somewhere. Those who have been most happy are those who have seen it as a way to get long term security of tenure - eg regard it almost as council housing. It will not help you "get on the property ladder" in any real sense.

Well they have to go up at some point. I won't be popular for saying this but if you have a mortgage and kept your job it's likely you did pretty well out of the downturn. Those of us renting and trying to save a deposit, not so much.

You're right rahrahrah. To be honest we could probably have pushed this vendor down by at least ?10,000 - ?15,000 and funded the work that needed doing but the i didn't like the place that much to do the work and live in a building site for a few months (as we can't afford to rent and pay a mortgage at the same time for any longer than a couple of months). It would have to be a real project - the boiler was broken, the bathroom was a health hazard and it had been disconnected from gas and electricty, and oddly all the internal doors had been replaced by those odd temporary chipboard doors locksmiths use. Not for the faint hearted!

It's madness out there. I viewed a three bed maisonette in Nunhead at the weekend. It had been advertised as "needing cosmetic work" and was on at ?285,000. The reality was somewhat different and instead if the paint job and new carpets i was imagining, you would need to gut it totally and spend a good ?15,000 to ?20,000 to make it somewhere you would want to think about living. When i said to the agent that at that price we simply wouldn't have the immediate spare cash to do the work the place required to make it habitable she replied - "oh if you buy it it will gain in value in the next two years even if you do nothing" It didn't seem to have occured to her that we were looking for a place to live in not an investment.

Yeh if you are being quoted much more than 2 - 4% at the moment then you must be viewed as a risk or have a very low deposit. What are the typical rates being offered to Help to Buy customers at the moment? We don't talk about it much here but there are sub prime lenders in the UK too, many of whom deal with people with bad credit or on low incomes - in my line of work we see a lot of people who brought under Right to Buy with those types of lenders and they really struggle if rates go up as they are already paying fairly high rates.

I think people are beginning to overextend as well due to low interest rates. For personal reasons we have deliberatly kept the amount we are borrowing fairly low but i was absolutely shocked when i was told how much lenders were prepared to lend us and then the implications for our household finances when i stress tested potential monthly repayments against a set of interest rate rise scenarios.

I agree Louisa (see my post above) house prices and house price speculation will kill many decent areas in London. whilst nothing wrong with either group, communities comprised of the rich and poor are not particularly sustainable. I have had an alert on Rightmove that last month for 2 bed properties within a three mile radius of SE15 for up ?350,000 - it is rarely anything in SE15/SE22 comes up.

PohSuan - Good post. I moved here from New Cross just about the time Damiloa Taylor was killed and I remember the media were falling over themselves to brand Peckham representative of everything that was wrong with inner city life. People used to sneer at me for living in Peckham and no one i know would dream of comming here for a night out (althougth we were happy with the pubs in Peckham and Nunhead and started goign to the newer venues such as Bar Story and the Bussey building as they opened) The area has changed a lot over the last ten years i have lived here - businesses and locals have developed real offers often in the face of adversity. Most of the business people like Micky at the CLF cafe and the guys behind Bar Story are locals and care deeply about the area. There is obviously tensions as more expensive places move in and particularly as more and more people crowd in in the Summer for Franks and they need to be sorted, whilst it still has its issues generally Peckham is a very exciting place to be right now. However the big issue is not expensive cushion shops in Bellenden Road, ?12 burgers or the hordes of middle class tourists flocking to Franks of a evening. What may kill Peckhams vibrancy is house prices. I moved here because i liked the area but mainly because it was cheaper than many other areas (i certainly couldn't have afforded Brixton let alone North London) It is them with a heavy heart that we have to seriously consider leaving the area soon. We are lucky enough to be in a position to buy a place soon but cannot afford to stay in SE15 let alone SE22. To be honest i don't think we could afford to stay if we carried on renting as our landlord has recently advertised one of the flats in our block at a good few hundred a month more than we are paying. I don't think we are unique and a lot of young couples and families who are committed to the area and often involved in the creative scene will be leaving this area over the next year or so because we simply cannot afford to stay.

Mark, great news paper, readable and relevant to the whole community. Well done to all involved. It would be great to see some more items on Peckham history including the background to some of the more recent communities, we know a lot about the Brixton story but less about Peckhams.

You need to speak to your distributor not your supplier. There will be a number for UK Power networks on your energy bill.

Fox - those rules are for "credit " meters. If you have pre payment there are certasin rules the energy suppliers have to abide by in terms of responding to faults and replacing lost top up keys and cards. However if you fail to top up you have disconnected yourself and so the rules you quote do not apply. It is a bit rough as pre payment emters are often used by poorer people and are fitted by energy suppliers as an alternative to disconnection for those in debt so you could say, if you were cynical, energy suppliers are giving people the means to disconnect themselves.

Hi Vik - gas ones do indeed disconnect overnight. The majority, but not all, of electric ones now have "no disconnect periods" at night.

There was a woman doing that in Camberwell when i lived there a few years back. Her story was more elaborate involving a daughter who was on kidney dialysis. I offered to walk her to Kings Colleage hospital to get help for her daughter, she abruptly disappeared. For those that are unsure is this is a scam- a few facts about Pre payment meters: 1. There is ?5 of emergency credit on pre payment meters after the money has run out 2. electric meters will not disconnect over night , even if the money has run out 3. Energy companies will not fit a pre payment meter if someone is dependent on electricity for health reasons - for example if they need oxygen overnight. 4. If they have lost their card/key and need to top up they can ring their energy compnay and they will do what is known as "an ememrgency wind on" to give them enough enenrgy until a repalcement card/key arrives.

The problem is Londonmix that home ownership is beginning to fail on that one - the way London house pices are soaring people can only afford a one bedroom flat so are forced to move out of the area if their families expand (or are even started) There was a good article in the Guardian about just that at the weekend. I'm not saying that anyone has the right to a house they can afford anywhere but communities that are full of the very rich and very poor or just an aging popualtion that managed to buy cheap 20 - 30 years ago are no good. There are some rural villages now in high house price, low job areas that are increasingly aging as young people cannot afford to stay there.

Agreed but the problem with that it that communities suffer if people have to move on everytime the market changes. I moved to London because house prices are high and job opportunties are low in the small Kent village i grew up in. I moved to Nunhead/Peckham as it was affordable and now it is becomming rapidly less so, when out rental contract is up i will have to move on as i cannot afford soem of the rents i am seeing round here. Fair enough you say but i will leave an area i have put down roots in over the last ten years. Communities need a stable population for all sorts of thing, community involvement, helping out older and more vulnerable residents, volunteering - increasingly the transience of youth is beginnng to apply to people in the 30s and 40s and soaring rents and house prices force people to move on regularly in search of cheaper housing. This does not do communities any good and if it continues many areas such as East Dulwich will suffer very soon. People will always have to make choices and sacrifices but communities suffer if people are constantly on the move. My Dads small village is now a vilalge of old people as young families cannot afford to live there. Even expensive areas need people to do the lower paid jobs. Whislt those us us with salaried central london 9-5 jobs can afford to move out further and commute, that's often not an option for the lower paid or those on shift work. For example if you work in East Dulwich/Peckham earning ?8 an hour (as many catering, cleaning and bar jobs do) and maybe you start at 4am or finish at 3am the cost and time implicatiosn of travelling any distance automatically make that job unviable.