Community Information

Tottenham is a multicultural neighborhood housing a large percentage of migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees. Consensuses have proven worthless in trying to get an understanding of that percentage (many, many people are here illegally and our borough has a population turnover rate of more than 35,000 people a year), but at last count, there were over 350 languages spoken in our community, 250 of which are spoken in our local schools.

According to the Deputy Prime Minister’s office, the borough of Haringey is the fifth most deprived area in all of England, and the 2nd most deprived area in London.
Thirty percent of its residents live in council flats (known as projects to our American friends) which also happen to be within the top ten most deprived in England. This makes up more than 20,000 households. It is estimated that 31% of households in our borough are living in unsuitable housing. The most common reasons for unsuitability are major disrepair and unfitness (17,144 households) and overcrowding (6,310 households). It is not uncommon for families of fifteen or more to be living in one two bedroom flat.

According to the city of London, there are just over 1000 recognized homeless people living in our borough. However, there are more than 2000 people who consider themselves to be homeless. Another important point is that the UK does not keep homeless statistics on minors and, therefore, officially considers there to be zero homeless young people living in the city of London or in the community of Tottenham. We disagree.

Over 35% of the students living in Tottenham qualify for free school meals and more than half of them speak English as a second (or sometimes third, fourth, or fifth) language. As you might imagine, educating a child in English becomes very difficult when, due to the language barrier, there are not parents at home who can help with lessons.

Pregnancy among 15-17 year olds in our borough is nearly double the average of England and Wales.

Communicable diseases continue to be a health threat to the local population with infectious disease admissions remaining high. Tuberculosis is of particular concern. In addition, reported uptake of all childhood immunizations remains more than 10% lower than national levels.

In a district consensus, nearly half of all respondents named crime as their top concern. Last year Tottenham had the second highest number of burglaries in all of London. It had the first highest number of personal burglaries (muggings) of any surrounding borough. And it had the fifth number of violent crimes (including rape).

It is hard to get a good estimate of the different religions represented in the area, but certainly in our own work and relationships with people we have experienced a large number of Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Jews, Buddhists, and even Christians living in the area. London is also the focal point for Wiccans all over the world and we know of and have experienced large numbers of them living in our area.

Likewise it is hard to get good facts concerning the different nationalities living in our area, but we currently work with large numbers of Polish, Caribbean, Ghanaian, Nigerian, Turkish, Iranian, and Bangladeshi, as well as other large numbers of Eastern Europeans, Asian, Middle Eastern, and other African countries. This year the EU opened its doors to Romania so we are currently preparing for the large influx of people that this will bring to our community.

Though the above might sound quite hopeless, we are far from it. For one thing, though ours is a poor community, it is also a blessed one. Those who have made it to our community are among the lucky survivors. Most of our neighbors have family and friends back home who would give anything for the opportunity of living here. In fact, many of our families live in tight conditions because so much of their income goes to supporting family back in home countries. Though immigrants often get a bad rap, our experience has been that they are some of the hardest working, and selfless people on the planet. We have learned a great deal from them in that regard.

Another sign of hope are our new Safer Neighborhoods Teams. Safer Neighborhoods Teams put more police officers on the streets who work much more closely with the community. We work very closely with these teams and several of their officers serve in different roles throughout our programs. As a result of these wonderful people, and after only a year in service, last year we saw our first drop in crime rates. We are very fond of our Safer Neighborhoods Teams and it is our hope to continue supporting them both on and off the streets.

Our third reason to hope, and possibly the one that we are most thankful for, are the churches that we partner with in the community. The first is the local Church of England who have been a huge support and fan of ours from the very beginning. In addition to their Vicar’s wise counsel, they have sent us volunteers, and have also put us in touch with many other helpful community resources. We honestly don’t know where we would be without them. In addition to the local Church of England, we have recently begun working very closely with a local group of Southern Baptist Missionaries. We have found them to be very selfless in their approach to ministry and have also found them to be very likeminded in their approach to sharing the love of Jesus through relationships and relevant community programs. Though we have only been working with them for a few months, they have already had a great impact on our ministry and we are very much looking forward to serving alongside them during the year ahead. Finally we also have the support of another Salvation Army Church not far from us. The Wood Green Salvation Army has been our own home church since arriving in England. They have supported us through prayer, friendship, counsel, and even through a small team who have recently helped us to plant a cell group in our community. We are forever grateful for their friendship and support.

So as you pray for us, please start by simply thanking God for how He is already moving in and providing for our community.

Tim & Jamie Miller