‘It was a storm… now it’s a hurricane’: Has the cost of living crisis been forgotten? | UK News

With £ 99 a month to live from Aida, it 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 left after she paid her bills. Aida’s accommodation is provided by the local authority.

‘Nine -and -nine pounds in a month -even for bedding, pillows or something. So many things for a home. ‘

At the Food Bank, Aida is called to raise handouts to get her through the week.

It’s been three years since we last visited this food bank at the Marks Gate Community Hub in Romford, Essex, when the living crisis is described as the worst in a generation.

After three grinding years of the end of the end, the Food Bank organizer – and her clients – tells that things do not improve. In reality, they feel that things have got even worse.

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“In general, the Cost of living costs Crisis has risen significantly since three years ago. It’s worse, ‘said Asthma 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 incessantly busy. ‘

Asthma runs around and calls people forward – they offer basic aspects such as potatoes, pasta and spices.

She tells us that some always come early, anxiously will run out of the supplies.

Next in the line at the food bank is a woman dragging a large suitcase – the zipper pulls back to push into a large bottle of cooking oil and everything the food bank will give her.

Asthma describes almost all the people who come to the center 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 have access to a changing benefits system.

‘It’s also about so many other obstacles they face. Many are not technically skilled. They received much of the tax support from the council that was significantly reduced.

We literally put people in our faces and say ‘do it for us’. ‘

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The wires of the reason why people say they are struggling through all communities. Across the road from the community center, we talk to people who tell us again and again that they feel that the cost of living has been forgotten.

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One woman tells us, “I don’t know how people are going to live. They put it up and up and up. It’s all. You are worried about the gas account, the electric bill, the council account.

“And I know people who are desperate and that they cannot pay their bills and that they are worried to end up in court.”

If we continue to return our steps from three years ago, we will return to Barking in East London and look at a washer where we meet a familiar face – Myriam Sinon who has worked in the business for the past ten years.

I ask her if she imagines that we would have stand here three years after we met, and things would not have improved.

“I didn’t expect it to be worse,” she says.

Myriam says electricity prices have made four times over the past three years – but the washer did not raise prices, for fear that it would expel customers.

Everyone should wash things and she says people find ways to share the costs – to collect laundry from people they know to create a maximum load for the machines.

People hope to see an end in sight. But Myriam has a clear prediction if things don’t improve.

“There will be crime every time,” she says. “If people don’t get enough money, they start stealing. They can kill you for a watch or phone. ‘