The cost of living crisis has been going on for decades – just ask families like mine

theguardian.com:

For many people, the cost of living crisis seems to have reared its ugly head a few months ago, with the new discussion over the dinner table being the choice between heating or eating. But this has been a concern for working-class families for well over a decade. It has only become a “crisis” now that it has begun to affect middle-class families too.

I grew up in Whinney Banks in Middlesbrough, one of the most deprived areas in England, with almost a third of children living in income-deprived households.My mum is a first-generation immigrant, and my parents had to start from nothing here. They lived on top of a corner shop where they worked for less than the minimum wage. When I was born, they weren’t eligible for benefits. For a while, we were homeless – when my mum was heavily pregnant with my brother – and I took my first steps in a hostel for families.

The cost of living crisis isn’t new. What is new is the utter lack of support to families who are in a similar situation to mine. We were eventually moved from the homeless hostel into a brand-new council house a few streets away from the corner shop where my parents used to work. Such housing is availableto far fewer people now. Providing families with safe housing as quickly as possible is not treated as a priority in the way it was for us back then.

Whinney Banks community centre and library, or “the Youthy” as we called it, was the place where I first used a computer and created my first embarrassingly named email address. It was where my mum made friends with other local mums in a cooking class, even though she was already an amazing cook. It’s where me and my brother would spend almost every half-term going on trips on a minibus with other local children or