Students forcing Walkley family to move

[sw9wj]

It may have happened in Leeds but if you look at the student areas in Sheffield it just isn't the case. You could hardly call Crookes, Broomhill, Walkley or Eccelsall road slums. Is it really any worse now than it was ten years ago (when I was first a student). I don't think so and I don't see any reason for it to get worse in the future. I agree with asbo that it is not necessarily students that are the problem.

[sciencegirl]

How does this woman know that the "yobs" on her road were students???

Were they all wearing jumpers saying "I am a student"? Just because the trouble happened in a time when the students were around, it doesn't mean they were responsible! Considering many students live in Sheffield 12 months of the year, why not blame all crime, vandalism and antisocial behaviour on them hey?!

Perhaps students were responsible for some or all of the trouble, but sensationalist articles like this are hardly going to solve the problem. The fact is that Broomhill, Walkley & Crookes are some of the most desirable and expensive areas in the city and house prices have risen dramatically in the last few years. I'm sure if this lasy wishes to move, there will be a queue of people lining up to buy her house!

[dougald]

Q. Why do you never hear of students getting ASBOS?

 

A. Because their antisocial behaviour 'drives the local economy'. From the moment they arrive at uni, they're being given cheap debt by the government and banks on the one hand, on the other hand being bombarded with attempts to make them spend it all on vodka, etc. The result is that while some are well behaved, others are encouraged to spend 3 years being complete a***holes.

 

This isn't all new. The first colleges at Oxford were founded in an attempt to get the unruly and riotous scholars under some kind of control, and that was in the 13th century. What is new is the idea that students are essentially consumers - whether buying 'transferable skills' from their universities, or vodka-laced pop from the binge drinks industry. If students did their drinking sitting on the swings in the local park, there'd be ASBOs on them sooner than you can say "chav scum". But because they play such a 'vital contribution' to the local economy, they mostly get away with it - until, that is, they graduate, find the banks have started charging interest on their overdrafts, get jobs and begin to understand why the rest of the world loathes drunken idiots yelling in the street at three o'clock on a weekday morning and vomiting over the cash machine...

[Rushup]

Originally posted by dougald

Q. Why do you never hear of students getting ASBOS?

 

Students generally don't go around spraying graffiti, smash up bus stops, get drunk outside shops........

 

They generally don't commit violent crimes, burglary or muggings. Rather, they tend to be on the receiving end of them.

 

The vast majority of students are not nuisance neighbours, and do not intimidate locals by hanging around in gangs.

 

So, what case have you got for giving students ASBO's?

[AlquarUK]

Thats pretty sucky innit!!

 

On the plus side they have nearly finished building those massive student accomodations and there are more being built now. I asume this is going to put quite a few of these houses without tennents as will be cheaper etc? well that or there will just be even more students??

[StarSparkle]

Originally posted by sw9wj

It may have happened in Leeds but if you look at the student areas in Sheffield it just isn't the case. You could hardly call Crookes, Broomhill, Walkley or Eccelsall road slums. Is it really any worse now than it was ten years ago (when I was first a student). I don't think so and I don't see any reason for it to get worse in the future. I agree with asbo that it is not necessarily students that are the problem.

 

If you bothered to read what I wrote, I didn't say Crookes, Broomhill, Walkley or Eccleshall are slums - clearly they aren't..... yet.

 

It took a while for Headingley to become a slum - but it's got there, and I can see the same pattern happening, certainly in Broomhill, maybe in Crookes, with the potential at Walkley. I can't comment on Eccleshall as I don't really know it that well.

 

I was posting in the hope that these areas of Sheffield WOULDN'T go the way of Leeds - but I am quite concerned for the future.

 

StarSparkle

[dougald]

"They generally don't commit violent crimes, burglary or muggings...."

 

The whole point of ASBOs is that they AREN'T used to tackle that sort of crime - they're ways of dealing with the kind of antisocial behaviour that used to fall below the police radar. That basically means anything that makes a neighbourhood more unpleasant to live in.

 

As they're generally applied, this means spraying graffiti or hanging around in gangs on streetcorners. Where I live and work, in Sharrow and the city centre, it's obvious as soon as the students come back because of the increase in night time noise, fast food detritus, vomit on pavements (and, on one occasion, the nearest cash machine), disarrayed street furniture. Unless you've lived in a student neighbourhood both in and out of term time, you probably aren't aware of how much difference it makes. My argument is that this is just as much antisocial behaviour as graffiti or street-drinking - and the only reason it isn't treated as such is because it's not done by poor people.

 

(Interestingly, the exception seems to be in Worcester: http://worcester.oncampusuk.co.uk/main/campaigns/ASBO.)

[StarSparkle]

Originally posted by Agent ****

Landlords are like any other businessman/woman; they are trying to make money.

 

If you owned a 2 bedroomed house that you were planning on letting, and could potentially double your income by converting one of the ground floor rooms into another bedroom, wouldn't you do it? I know I would.

 

I've got too much personal morality to become a landlady - simple as that. I couldn't live with being such a parasite.

 

StarSparkle

[Rushup]

Originally posted by dougald

[bUnless you've lived in a student neighbourhood both in and out of term time, you probably aren't aware of how much difference it makes. [/b]

 

I've lived in a student area during and out of termtime for the last 4 years.

 

The graffiti 'tagging' and idiots that hang around where I live are from the surrounding schools. Though obviously there are exceptions.

[dougald]

"I've lived in a student area during and out of termtime for the last 4 years... The graffiti 'tagging' and idiots that hang around where I live are from the surrounding schools. Though obviously there are exceptions."

 

I wasn't saying students did graffiti or hung around on street corners. Do you accept that the behaviour I described is also antisocial? And can you think of another reason, apart from the fact that students are cash cows for the city, why their antisocial behaviour is tolerated?