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Poverty, unemployment and repossessions on the rise years before the recession began

Monitoring poverty and social exclusion 2009

A report released today (3 December) by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation shows that levels of poverty, unemployment and repossessions in the UK started rising as early as 2004, long before the recession began. These findings mean that in order to reduce the number of people living in poverty by any serious margin, the UK needs to recover not just from the recession, but from deep-seated problems that were re-emerging before the downturn.

poverty is now back at the same level as 2000; having risen every year since 2004/05;

two million children are in low-income, working households - the highest figure since records began;

unemployment bottomed in 2005 and now nearly 1 in 8 people of working age want but lack a job; the highest since 1997;

repossessions are six times the level of 2004 and are now back at the level they were in 1994.

Work does not guarantee a route out of poverty

 
Work and worklessness in deprived neighbourhoods

The study   challenges official policy that training or education can act as a spring board to get people into the job market or help career progression. While government has focused on the important objective of raising skills, aptitude and motivation, people's experience showed that there was often little opportunity to progress in their current job, even when they had acquired new skills or qualifications.

"There needs to be a stronger focus on the quality of work on offer. Government and employers should work together to improve terms and conditions so that work can break the cycle of poverty and support family life. Policy-makers also need to take into account the reality of how difficult it is to find work in areas that were struggling even before the recession hit."

Poorest communities remain forgotten

Communities in recession: the impact on deprived neighbourhoods

Joseph Rowntree Foundation reserach asks: What impact is the current recession having on disadvantaged communities and what can we learn from evidence from previous recessions?

"Talk is already focusing on the UK's emergence from the current recession, but this report illustrates how the poorest communities struggle to recover from economic downturns even in periods of wider prosperity.

"We face tough decisions over the next few months. It is essential that these decisions do not further disadvantage the very poorest communities which have already suffered the most. We need to emerge from this recession with an economy that is both just and sustainable."

Lynsey Hanley Equality, not education, is the key to individual transformation

Karen Day When economic depression is a constant

The Impact of the Recession on Northern City-Regions

This paper, from IPPR, looks at the geographical effect of the recession across the United Kingdom and, in particular, at how it has affected deprived communities in the city-regions in the North of England and the people who live in them. It also offers some thoughts about the challenges these communities will face in the next few years.

Cities under Obama

Metropolis now

On the campaign trail, Barack Obama promised to champion America’s cities and help them help themselves. So how are they faring under his presidency?

While cities have long been to a large extent invisible in American public life, the country now has a president who actually likes them and understands their centrality. He recognises that almost all the big trends in US demographics (smaller households, ageing), culture (more tolerant, less racist), economics (the need for innovation, less waste, greater self-sufficiency) and the environment (dying) either predict or recommend the growth of cities. And he thinks their present dysfunction - the source of most of the country's main domestic problems, such as inequality, unsustainability and declining competitiveness - can be cured.

Empty, unlet and unloved

The new British high street Rotherham is typical of the small towns hit by recession and big-centre competition

This is not just Rotherham's problem, however. Nationally, an eighth of all high street shops are empty and unlet, twice as many as last year, with many towns seeing a slow, cancerous hollowing out of their streets that is as bad as here, or worse.

Michael Keith on an urgent policy rethink

Don't leave migration policy to the BNP

Before the election the UK must address the tensions between equalities law and the realities of job competition amid recession

"The economic and social factors that will trigger the recovery may in turn demand a defence of migration policy, understanding the eithical legacies of the colonial past and the labour market rationalities of the European present. Any such consideration requires both high quality research and an open and honest debate about a difficult subject. Otherwise the field is left to the half-truths and shibboleths of the British National Party to set the tone for the June elections. That is an outcome that few should welcome."

Florida on how recession might reshape urban america

Richard Florida: How the crash will reshape America

The economic crash has damaged some places much more severely than others. On the other side of the crisis, America’s economic landscape will look very different than it does today. What fate will the coming years hold for New York, Charlotte, Detroit, Las Vegas? Will the suburbs be ineffably changed? Which cities and regions can come back strong? And which will never come back at all?

Filling the spaces

Artists are coming to a high street near you

Shops stand empty while artists struggle to find exhibition spaces. Why not put the two together?

Giving artists space on the high street helps demystify the process of creating art, taking it away from the private studio and putting it into the shop front; spaces don't come much more accessible than your former Marks & Spencer or Woolies. How many people outside the art world ever get the chance to see an artist at work?

Recession opens possibility for community land

Common ground

The recession is shifting attitudes about land ownership, making it easier for local people to club together to buy sites - from inner London to rural Devon.

Practitioners  argue that urban neighbourhoods and villages around the country are crying out for new, equitable forms of land ownership - dictated by need, rather than by greed - to deliver affordable homes, new businesses and community facilities that are no longer at the mercy of markets.

Community Land Trusts a resource to assist you develop community land trust solutions for affordable housing, amenity and workspace in Britain.