With £99 a month to live off Aida has turned to a food bank.
“It’s very difficult. Extremely difficult. But I have to live,” says Aida Mascarenhas. The 75-year-old tells us £99 is all she has left after paying her bills. Aida’s accommodation is provided by the local authority.
“Ninety-nine pounds in a month – even for bedding, pillows or something. So many things for a house.”
At the food bank, Aida is called forward to collect handouts to get her through the week.
It’s three years since we last visited this food bank at the Marks Gate Community Hub in Romford, Essex, when the cost of living crisis was being described as the worst in a generation.
After three grinding years of making ends meet, the food bank organiser – and her clients – tell us things aren’t improving. In fact, they feel things have got even worse.
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“Overall the cost of living crisis has gone up considerably since three years ago. It’s worse,” says Asma Haq, founder of the Marks Gate Relief Project.
“For charities like us it was a storm anyway and now it’s a hurricane. We are busy non-stop.”
Asma is running around calling people forward – offering them basics like potatoes, pasta and spices.
She tells us some always come early, anxious the supplies will run out.
Next in line at the food bank is a woman dragging a large suitcase – pulling the zip back to shove in a large bottle of cooking oil and anything else the food bank will give her.
Asma describes almost all the people who come to the hub as non-white British, first-generation migrants.
She says most have broken or no English with little to no computer skills and want help to access a changing benefits system.
“It’s also about so many other barriers they face. A lot aren’t tech-savvy. They used to get a lot of council tax support which has been reduced considerably.
We’ve had people literally put their phones in our faces and say ‘do it for us’.”
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The threads of why people say they’re struggling weave through all communities. Across the road from the community centre we talk to people who again and again tell us they feel the cost of living has been forgotten about.
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One woman tells us: “I don’t know how people are going to live. They keep putting it up and up and up. It’s everything. You’re worrying about the gas bill, the electric bill, the council bill.
“And I know people that’s desperate and they cannot pay their bills and they’re worried about ending up in court.”
Continuing to retrace our steps from three years ago, we head back to Barking in east London and revisit a launderette where we meet a familiar face – Myriam Sinon who has worked in the business for the last 10 years.
I ask her if she imagined we would be standing here three years after we last met and things wouldn’t have improved.
“I didn’t expect that it would be worse,” she says.
Myriam says electricity prices have quadrupled in the past three years – but the launderette has not increased prices, fearing it would drive customers away.
Everyone needs to wash things and she says people are finding ways to share the cost – gathering up washing from people they know to create a maximum load for the machines.
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People are hoping to see an end in sight. But Myriam has a stark prediction if things don’t improve.
“There will be crime every time,” she says. “When people don’t get enough money they start stealing. They might kill you for a watch or phone.”
