If I didn’t have this I don’t think I would feel safe and secure, have my space to relax and switch off, the impact would be immense, always being on high alert.

 

My home gives me somewhere to escape when life is tough, especially work!!!! It is a place I can invite (or not invite) people round depending how I am feeling and feel proud of (pre COVID)  

 

I live in Hazel Grove in Stockport and I’m happy here as I am in walking distant to the majority of my friends and family, however it is a bit too close to work!!!

 

If I lost my home I would loose my independence, plus Master Splinter 🐢 would have to be cared for by someone else so I would loose him. I would loose my safety net, my comforts and all my physical belongings. If I lost my home because I couldn’t afford it I would also probably feel very embarrassed also. 

It’s the first home I have owned on my own so for me it is also an achievement that I (and my partner) have been able to buy our own home. I like to know at the end of a long day I can come home!

My home is memories!

I have lived in Warrington all my life, the area we live in now is different to the area that I grew up in, people say it is ‘rough’ where I live now (we do have a drug dealer that lives behind us) but its home and to me I don’t think it’s a bad area yes we have a council estate behind us but you can guarantee that when you walk to the shop everyone says hi or lets on and our neighbours are lovely. 

I feel fortunate for my home and feel grateful for the safety.

Its not our forever home but its our first home and always will be. 

I am currently renting- and I know it is probably going to be a while before I could afford to buy in the place I currently live!  

If I didn’t have somewhere to relax, somewhere I feel safe- then this would also affect every other aspect of my life. It would be absolutely devastating. 

 

I live in Bolton in the Halliwell area for the last 20 years, I live in a terraced house with street parking but it is round the corner my parents house and opposite my brothers house. There are many positive to where I live family is close by, schools are walking distance, a mosque 200 yards away to enable to pray and most of all brilliant neighbours. The only negative about where I live is that there is no of street parking.

 

For me to lose my home I would be devastated, the loss of security and loss of all the memories created with my family. If I lost my home I would move in with family but if that not possible then would have to look at social housing support or homeless shelter.

Home for me is a small town called Newton le Willows and for as much as I always thought I would leave, I never have and probably won’t as it a nice town and with all the networks available I’m only a short commute from Manchester.

Positives about home are it’s comfortable, quiet, secure, warm, nice view and when the kids aren’t let loose, it’s tidy!

Negatives: it could be bigger however I’m grateful for what I have!

If this was taken away I have no idea what life would be like and where I would be and not something I have considered and hop I never need to do so.

A home to me is my family. A house to me is where i can feel safe,   Keep my children safe, warm and have the material items that also bring happiness in a familiar enviroment to make memories.

Prior to living in my house now I only ever lived in one house as a child. I felt secure, safe, familiar, great connections with the community and now my children spend time with my parents in the same house and same opportunity’s to explore outside in a safe and caring community.

Before i bought my house it used to be my Grandmas house so it holds so many memories of my life before children, as a child myself, but more recently also memories of my children.

To lose my house would devastating, I’m quite a nostalgic person and this house and its community is one Ive known since a child as I have never really moved into an area that i am unfamiliar with. My husband often talks about moving as our family has grown over the years, I agree we need to consider it but I’m never actually able to envisaged it going ahead. He has lived in 12 houses before the age of 15 so moving as he says isn’t a big thing its just a house.

I would take some comfort in having my family with me however the security of being in a house I could call home would take time however would it ever be the same as what I have now?

The reason for the picture is i used to peer through this same window as a child when coming to visit my nan to check she wasn’t asleep on the sofa, or resting her eyes as she’d say.

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Home is.. A roof over your head, warmth inside and out.

Hot drink in our hands and dressing gown on.

Settled and quiet, secure in the knowledge of this is what I've made it.

Home takes a lot of work, to find that balance, home is always a working project and is never fully finished.
If I was to lose my home, I would rely on other families to take me in until I was back on my feet. I have the support around me with this. 
The drawbacks are slow systemic processes when things go wrong. 

I grew up in a flat in Hulme and attention to detail was not high on the Agenda. It was not a place that was loved but to exist in. 
  

There’s nowhere I’d rather live as this is where our roots are although that may change due to the current racial climate in the UK today.  We seem to be going backwards in terms of equality and justice.  

The physicality of my home is my security and I think a sense of self and who I am would be lost if I were to lose it. Losing my home and community would make me feel lost and quite fearful.  It would be a loss of control.  

 

 

I love where I live it’s quiet friendly and no body knows me the only down fall to where I live is I’m not near my family.

 

If for any reason this was all taken away from me I would be devastated. I would lose the house I’ve worked so hard for it’s taken me 15 years to get on the property ladder and to have that  taken away would be heartbreaking not only for me but for my children so there lives would be turned up side as well, we would end up moving back to my Mum and Dad and having to share a room. 

 

 

 

If I was to lose my home I would lose my security and miss the community.

But if you look at the opposite side of the building, we’re right on the canal. Which is fab in summer! 

A home to me is where I go and feel that I can relax and in a sense, do what I want! It makes it a home because it’s where I live with my partner. I like where I live because it’s the first place I’ve ever lived away from any of my parents. It’s my first piece of standing on my own two feet. I like that it’s a place me and my partner call our own. 

Since COVID though it has made me realise how much I would love to have a garden. When we were first initially locked down because we had no outside space I found it hard, but then started to take up running instead (as this was the only way we were allowed outside for an hour a day!) and I would like to live closer to our families and to our friends in the neigbourhood we moved out of to come here, but we chose to live here as it was cheaper and meant we were close to the centre for work purposes and could cut down on our expenses (we sold one car so now we have one between us as my partner works in Manchester so uses the train which is a 5 minute walk from our flat). 

If this was taken away from me, I wouldn’t lose much in terms of material aspects. We’ve only lived here for 18 months and it came furnished so most of this doesn’t belong to me anyway. But it would take away that independence I have gotten used too and I feel this is what would upset me the most. Of course I’d lose warmth and shelter too but I can find these elsewhere, we have a lot of family and friends that would take us in and support with this and we’re lucky that we both work full time so I feel we would manage to find somewhere else quite quickly but at first I’d feel like I was taking a step backwards in life and I was needing support again when I feel I should be ‘self-sufficient’ at my age.  

I have moved around a lot in rented accommodation for a variety of different reasons and mainly it is just because I was going of travelling and got used to moving around a lot and not being able to fully settle anywhere.  I have lived in my property now for 3 years which is the  longest I have stayed anywhere and I am still really liking it so far.  I live in an area called Chorlton in South Manchester. Chorlton is a lovely leafy area which hosts a lot of middle class families. 

The positives of living in Chorlton for me is it's very green and leafy, it has great walking, cycling and running areas with being right by the ees and waterparks. It has good cafes, shops and bars, I feel safe, it has good schools and I like how it is very open to  everyone and it appears a lot of people a very liberal. The main negatives for me is the house prices are astronomical and have raised massively over the last 10 years which has made it very unaffordable to live and some of my friends have had to move out of the area when they have wanted to buy. The other negative is the burglary rate is high with it being more of a well to  do area, so  most people have surveillance around their property . To insure your  house and car is also usually quite high due to this.

My home and garden means so much to me, it is my anchor, my retreat, my safe space. 

It gives me confidence, it heals, it gives me joy, it also gives me power to know I have a home to always go back to. I know most of the neighbours, and are good friend’s with next door. Community is important in making a home.

The negatives of Prestwich are that it isn’t so diverse. There is a main road running through it, which is high pollution. The dog owners don’t clear up their mess. Some people may be prejudice. There aren’t enough hills on the doorstep. 

If my home was taken away I wouldn’t be the same person, I would lose my confidence, my zing, I would be fearful for my family, my head would be filled with negative thoughts and there wouldn’t be a safe place to retreat. Whatever the situation, I would have to do whatever it took to protect my family and if this meant emigrating to another city or country then that’s what I would have to do. 

 

If I am feeling posh I live in East Manchester, however if I am being me I am a Beswick girl! The area I live has changed significantly over the years due to regeneration and although it has been positive there have been some downsides to it (not all the areas have had the same financial investment). The estate I live on is quiet, there are four houses on my street and there is a small hint and sense of community amongst the neighbours (we still borrow milk and sugar when we run out), it has easy public transport access to the City and there is a good choice of schools and local facilities (Thanks mainly to Sheikh Mansour J). The one thing that makes me smile about my community is the average house price is £140,000 and the MCFC Players drive through to the training ground – did you know Raheem Sterling earns £350,000 a week, he could pretty much buy my whole street!!!

 

In the future I would like to live in Canada with my family for a different life experience but also for my own personal career development (I am one of those people who does have a life plan!)

 

If I lost my home due to gentrification I would feel destroyed, helpless and vulnerable. I would feel really anxious about the people I love and how we would cope not having the security and warmth around us. I would also feel anger that everything we had worked hard for had in some ways been for nothing. I would go to my mum if we lost our home as she is the Matriarch who keeps all of my family together (she really is a true Queen)

I love my home being a really warm and cosy place so lots of candles, fire on and being snuggled up on the sofa. This gives me a sense of calm and happiness. Buying my house was probably my biggest achievement in my life so far as I was only 19 at the time and it was a brand new build, so I couldn’t ever imagine how it would feel to have that taken away from me.

I live in Rochdale and have done all my life. I used to live in a village called Norden and now I live in Castleton. Norden is what people would say is a ‘nice’ part of Rochdale so to move from there was very different for me. Although I live on a nice estate now, I don’t engage in the area where I live now, and I will still go to Norden to go out or see family and friends etc.

Although I love my house, regardless of where it is, I would like to move back to Norden at some point. The only reason I moved was because the house prices where way out of my budget when I wanted my own house and it was a lot cheaper to get a 3 bed house in Castleton than it was in Norden.

 

If my house was to be taken away from me, I would be devastated because like many people, my home is something that I have worked really hard for and put a lot of time and money in to it to make it my home. If I was to lose my home, I would be lucky in the sense that I could go back and live with my mum, however this would still mean that I would lose my independence, my personal space, my privacy and all of those memories which are important things to me.

My home is secluded, secure and off the beaten track and I enjoy the privacy this gives me. It also means the dogs can make as much noise as they like and are safe when out in the garden!

I do sometimes question whether I’d like to live closer to amenities or places to go out as currently this always involves a car journey, however there’s always a compromise with home buying and it meets more of our needs now than not. 

I view owning my home as important and gives me independence and if this was taken away I’d feel less secure. Whilst family would support, they don’t live locally so this would completely change my whole life in terms of work.