Overheard conversations: who gets to count as community in Streatham?

Streatham is changing so quickly, but not necessarily in a way that promotes the kind of diversity (ethnic, financial, architectural, sexual, cultural and so on) that has made London a significantly creative location.

This morning I overheard some soya Latte slurping grockles (they can't afford to live in Fulham anymore) in a pricey new Coffee shop near Morrison's discussing how to make 'the Green' (actually a Plague Pit) in the Dip more of a community centre. They obviously haven't noticed that it already is a community centre, often brim full of people chatting amicably after prayers at the local mosque. It is also a place where homeless people and people chucked out of hostels often spend the day, and has been for the last thirty years,

What I think they must  mean by community then, is one particular type of community, or, in other words, a haven for wealthy white Yummy Mummys and their future ruling-class spawn. 

One of the interesting snippets I overheard today was how the Gay Sauna called Chariots, adjacent to the Plague Pit, doesn't serve the community. Well  I wouldn't be so sure of that!  Check your husband's credit card bills, or perhaps he only uses cash? 

Chariots has clearly served its customers (i.e. members of our community) for many years now, or it wouldn't still exist, so I don't know how these self-important  movers and shakers decide who does and does not count as part of our community?

This kind of thinking will end in social and ethnic cleansing for Streatham (not to mention the rest of London), it 's beginning to make me feel very uncomfortable, and ultimately unwelcome. I don't subscribe to the fake and culturally narrow construction of community they are so eager to promote. What they want is a pre-war village green with a pre-war social fabric, in which jolly peasants serve them artisanal foods priced beyond anything that someone on or below the average wage could possibly imagine consuming. Unfortunately it looks like their dreams are coming true, though the increasing desperation of beggars and homeless people on the streets of Streatham will continue to reveal the reality behind these decadent illusions of affluent, homogeneous community.