Poverty is part of the blueprint on newbuild estates likes ours

Building community is about more than how many bedrooms you’ve got

Imogen Ball

Imogen is a writer, mum, and priest on a new housing development in the South-West of England.

A render of a new housing estate showing a road, wooden fences and clapperboard hosues.

A developer's render of a new housing estate.

Modunite Ltd on Unsplash.

Enter a newbuild property, and the first thing you’re greeted with is sparkle. The thick dust of construction has been wiped away, and everything is so clean, so tidy, so… new.

If you’ve bought such a property, you will have likely had a meeting during the purchasing process to ‘choose your options.’ During this meeting you will surprise yourself at your attention to detail: working out which plugs require USB connection; how many spotlights you want in the kitchen; what colour the cupboards should be, and what kind of flooring you’d like. Who knew that flooring was such an expensive, and extensive decision.

For some of my new neighbours, however, the process has been a little different.

As with all newbuild developments, there is a requirement for 10 per cent of it to be made up of affordable housing. On an estate as big as ours, that means approximately 200 homes. ‘Affordable’ is a relatively broad category, with schemes including shared ownership and discounted rates for first-time buyers included alongside social housing. In reality, affordable housing is still not affordable for everyone.vOn arrival at your new affordable home, you are unlikely to find the spotlighted kitchen, the USB plug sockets, and extensive pre-laid flooring. These are all unaffordable extras. Instead, you are greeted by your bare, naked subfloor. Under our newbuild fluffy carpets lie cold and hard ground. In new social housing, this means a dusty floor for little feet to take first steps on.

It was perhaps naïve of me, but I had assumed that flooring was a relatively essential element in a house, even if it’s social housing. I was wrong. Even when a previous tenant has had flooring fitted it can be removed between occupancies. Hygiene-related? Maybe. But perhaps the blanket ban on flooring could be reconsidered.

On our housing development, social housing is mixed in with privately-owned properties. Detached five-beds sit just down the road from terraced socials – but the distance between the lives of their inhabitants is significantly bigger than the distance between their homes. There is already reputational differentiation between streets.

Then there’s the geographical positioning. There is no prescription of how social housing needs should be spread across the development. In our case, it is weighted heavily towards the first few stages of building. As building progresses, houses will get bigger and the distance between them more spacious. In keeping with the locality, the back end of our development will see more palatial, less ‘affordable’ homes. Putting affordable housing up front means that the 10 per cent quota is achieved, publicised, and the existing county culture protected. It also means that these early stages of our development will actually be more heavily populated with social housing. Perhaps even attempts at integration of affordable housing will be undermined by this planning strategy.

As we live and do life on our new development, I have been privileged to meet lots of different people from lots of different backgrounds and in lots of different housing. Some are first-time buyers, who have struggled to save a deposit and work long shifts to cover the mortgage repayments. Some are experienced homeowners, who have upgraded to bigger homes and bigger mortgage repayments. Some (like us) have become homeowners, only through the generosity of parents and through shared ownership schemes. Some are social housing tenants, paying rent on homes that will never be theirs.

In this mixing pot of society, we are trying to build a community that supports all. Just over a year ago, my husband and I moved onto the estate with our boys to start a new church. With the help of others, we aim to be at the centre of a thriving local neighbourhood.’ This means being committed to community; loving our neighbours, no matter who our neighbours are. Because Jesus doesn’t care where people live or where they came from. Jesus doesn’t care how many bedrooms your home has, or what percentage of your home you actually own. Jesus doesn’t care whether or not you have adequate flooring.

He also acknowledges the dusty, dirty feet of his followers. He sends them into strangers’ homes with a message of peace, their dusty feet only to be shaken off on the way out. I suppose this means their feet remain dust-coated and mud-caked while they’re there. So, while we are here, perhaps we will also have dusty feet - with or without carpets.

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Snippet

America

Change

Politics

Trauma

7 November 2024

3 min read

How America reckons with its fractured reality

The first thing is always to listen. To sit. To feel.

Jared Stacy

Jared holds a Theological Ethics PhD from the University of Aberdeen. His research focuses conspiracy theory, politics, and evangelicalism.

Two people sit at the table, one dictates as the other types. Behind a banner reads: write a postcard to the next president.i

Artist Sheryl Oring types messages to the president.

instagram/usf_npml

Yesterday, the day after the election, I preached a funeral. I heard the name of our President-elect only once. But I did speak on Jesus and Lazarus. About pain and loss.

I named our enemy, death, that robber, cheat, and swindler. And I spoke about grief—we all grieve in so many different ways. And then about tears. I shared about the man from Nazareth, whose public grief before the tomb of his friend drew hushed whispers from onlookers.

It was, you may remember, a tomb he was about to open. He knew, Jesus did, what he was about to do. And did it so that those who were there would become witnesses to precisely what God is about: defeating death. “Come out, Lazarus!” says Jesus, and he does.

The Christian faith, I told the grieving, would have us believe that even in our grief, there is a hope that hems it in. That Jesus enters our darkness and comes to rob death of its finality. I love too that Jesus says next— “Unbind him!” —turning onlookers into witnesses and participants.

This was how I spent my day. I’m not sure I could have spend it any better. Not because it was an escape from the election, but it forced some perspective on me. Because T.S. Eliot is right: “we cannot bear much reality.”

Here, political autopsies are everywhere. Some talk of the Democrat’s conceit, of denying President Biden’s liability as a candidate, bypassing the primaries, refusing to meet economic concerns. There’s talk of Trump’s genius and what looks to be the end of his legal troubles. There’s talk of the downfall of America, of ascendant and aspiring authoritarianisms. Perhaps. Especially if we take Trump at his word.

But as the funeral ends, I’m weighed down by the messages I’m starting to read. Not about the results alone. Not questions about political strategy and futures. No, these are pained voices from a Christian community in America betraying itself.

My phone messages are filled with stories of pain and loss. Friends and strangers alike, enduring the same loss, the same betrayal. The communities that taught us the faith now distort it. And none of this is new.

Howard Thurman, who mentored Martin Luther King Jr., said it back in 1946: “the tragic truth is that the church permits various hate groups in our common life to establish squatter’s rights in the minds of believers because there has been no adequate teaching on the meaning of the faith in terms of human dignity.” This loss has been with us for generations. But these fissures and fractures are ours to bear today. And they are not unconnected from the social and political chaos of America.

Martin Luther once said, “living, dying, and being damned makes one a theologian.” This has taught me to welcome, rather than despise, accusations that question the validity of my faith. It’s also made me suspicious of the misplaced messianic hope from which such questions emerge. It’s a false hope not easily displaced.

Before I returned to the States from living in Scotland these last few years, a good friend told me honestly: “perhaps America will have to ride it out, all of it, until it’s done.” The thought seemed a far-off scenario then. But I think he’s right.

When Israel built the golden calf in the wilderness, Moses made them grind it up into powder, mixing it in their drinks. The Christian community in America, whether we realize it our not, will soon be drinking our idolatry down to the dregs with consequences beyond Christian community itself.

And people ask, “what should we do?” And I think that time is near for that question. But the first thing is always to listen. To sit. To feel. And to remember that it’s not for nothing that Jesus, who pronounced so many woes over Jerusalem, also wept over it.

This article’s image is of Sheryl Oring, an artist who invites the public to write to the next president. She has typed and sent thousands of messages to the White House every election since 2004 as part of her performance series I Wish to Say. Read more about her and the letters: Artist Invites the Public to Write Letters to the Next US President