Living next to asylum seeker HMO, ask me anything

There's a lot of confusion about the different stages in the process and who is entitled to what before and after a decision is made. A simple flow chart on the government website would help.

How was an HMO licence granted in absence of firewalls in loft? I would contact council about this along with advice there are now five or six residents. Higher occupancy can effect what conditions the council imposes. Councils can make good money out of licencing and penalties,so they may be interested in pursuing.

I have a Kurdish friend who came here as an asylum seeker. She'd not long got refugee status when I met her.

The Kurds are a persecuted minority in her country of origin and she was imprisoned and tortured for speaking out and writing articles exposing the way they are treated. She's now running the education programme for a local museum and historical site.

There are two types of HMOs - you can just tell which are the ones let to young professionals and which are let to the council. I would not have an issue living next to the ones full of young professionals.

I also think the thread is derailed somewhat by OP mentioning asylum seekers. In my road the issue is the HMOs being a council run one. There are also people born in Britain living in them who are far worse behaved - NEETs dealing drugs, or high on drugs, etc. the issue is the HMOs being packed into tiny terraced streets and no care for people who live there already.

Much tighter rules on shared housing would be of some benefit, having had a really awful experience with a local house, let to the staff of a very upmarket hotel, as staff accommodation.
Despite covenants being that only one family can occupy the house, the legal steps I would have had to take would have been at my expense.

The house, in a tiny courtyard development, had parking for one car, yet 4 adults, all with cars, plus their guests, even blocking in an ambulance.

Limited access to our own parking and access It was awful and the very smart, very middle class, articulate tenants, really obnoxious, a female staff member accusing a male neighbour of ‘being aggressive’ and making us all aware that ‘my father is a police officer’. Hotel management not interested at all, hotel HR protecting their staff. No way of sorting it out.

However, the other side of this is where would young people live to work locally. Young people often have to rent rooms in HMO’s as the cost of housing outweighs their earnings.

Will you campaign for change @JapanesePotWeed? Where would you start with this? How would you make sure young people have a home?

They absolutely cannot claim UC. They have "no recourse to public funds" until and unless they are granted refugee status.

This was the same for all means-tested benefits and PIP during the entire 25 years I was a welfare rights adviser, which ended less than a year ago.

I suggest you pop into your local library, where you should find they have a copy of the CPAG Welfare Benefits Handbook. It sets out all the criteria re benefits for people coming to the UK from abroad, and you'll be able to check for yourself.

Apparently someone was offended at my factual post and got it removed. It is a fact these asylum houses are always only men. Never women and children. It’s also a fact that adult men absolutely have posed as children and have even been filmed by school children sitting in their maths classes at secondary schools pretending to be 15 before.

This is a huge fire risk. I am sure the hmo owner needs to do fire stopping compartmentation in the loft, they would have done a fire risk assessment and the assessor should have looked into the loft

You should contact the hmo licensing authority, probably your council, and tell them about this.

It seems impossible to debunk this myth that asylum seekers get benefits. I've pointed it out on many threads and so have several others. People seem not to want to believe it, or they prefer to perpetuate the misinformation.

Interesting to hear how other countries deal with this.
In particular the USA where border controls are very tight, every time I have been they are.
Do they put these men straight back on a plane?
Do asylum seekers just know not to bother trying to gain entry?

Goodness, you know your HMO neighbours well, you must talk to them loads and have fantastic relationships in place, to be sharing so much information.

I don’t know that much about my neighbours of 25 years.

Do you own or rent? Having no party wall in the loft space is a fire risk (is the place insured?) and means anyone with access to loft can get into your house. I would not feel safe with that set up whoever was living next door.

What position. And approved what??

OK, I'd better tell some of the asylum seekers I work with to cancel their active UC claims. Will let them know today 😂

Seriously though, there's a difference between something being policy and whether it actually happens or not. The benefits system in all it's forms is open to compromise and abuse.

It costs around £1k pw to keep someone in prison, so £2k to fuck off is probably a lot more economical.

Yes absolutely. I work with migrants of all kinds so can confirm first hand that there are cases where both people waiting to be accepted as asylum seekers and those whose claims have been processed receive UC. I think it's simply the case that as it's the benefit that most access then the extra few who don't have means of support but aren't entitled to it van also claim because the local councils don't want to develop long term homeless populations. So this is why we often see the tents spring up, people will arrive in the UK by any route, pose as homeless and be fast tracked into housing and a UC income. It may not align with policy but it is definitely what we see regularly.

Have you ever gone onto the Living Overseas board? Lots of migrants don't particularly like their host country, some even hate it, and despite even owning a home in the UK and having close family they don't come back. There are lots of reasons for this.

I had no idea it was even a thing. Every house I've ever lived in has had walls that go right up to the roof!

The thought that someone could get into the loft next door and come down into my house is really quite perturbing, I would hate it. I'd have to put a lock of some sort on the access to the loft, I think.

If it’s such a difficult life why are they here? Especially from countries where there are no wars?

My sister is in the same position. She lives in a terrace fairly near a city centre, 20 years ago it was mostly residential but it's now fairly commercial. In recent years there has been a lot of HMO applications and a lot of the houses have been turned into emergency hostel accommodation, which has brought a lot of drugs and antisocial behaviour into the area. Opposite her there is a chain hotel that was turned into asylum seeker accommodation for men, mostly from Somalia and neighbouring countries. Two years ago a group of the men rented the house beside her and converted it into a small teashop/takeaway. It seems to be exclusively for men, very rarely do you see a woman sitting there (they have seating outside).
Everyone is horrified when they find out but my sister (who has 2 young adult daughters) loves it, she says it's like having a private security company for free. The people from the hostel down a bit (all local people) don't loiter anymore, previously they would drink in the street which caused fighting and brought trouble. They help her if she has car trouble, are polite and respectful and she doesn't worry about burglary if she's away, which had been a previous problem. She also feels her daughters are safe when they are alone at night as the cafe is open to all hours. Her only complaint is that they talk at high volumes, the walls upstairs are quite thin so she can always heat them, but feels that's a small price to pay.
In the last year there has been an increase in 'citizen journalist' type of people who will come outside and film the men, shouting things at them, accusing them of stuff and then uploading it onto social media. This then brings other 'protect are women [sic]' locals in who want to stir up trouble which is a shame.

Possibly but if you can return to country it would take the pressure off a lot of systems, fairly sure you would get a big exodus.

There was that whistleblower who said only 1% of asylum claims were basically valid but there was pressure to just validate claims.

Rawanda would have been a good option, if you are just going to get put in a third county it would massively reduce incentives for economic migrants.

The heart bleeds. Meanwhile many people here waiting years with small children living in cramped, awful conditions waiting to be housed. Wouldn't mind but many of the asylum seekers aren't genuine, throwing their passports in the sea. (Ooh I wonder why that is??!!-maybe because many have criminal convictions) Men who have left women and children behind. Men that have been known to assault women here.
Why, when we're a country in dire straits are we allowing these people in when other countries aren't and are looking after their own? Hmmmmm.......

I’ve just looked up the fire risk because of the loft situation.
It LOOKS like the council could have their HMO licence for it unless it’s rectified?
HMOs are obviously a much greater fire risk than normal houses and the fire could travel much more easily.
Obviously in practice it’s much trickier especially if Mears / landlord are interested in doing as little as possible but worth looking into.
Dealing with any bellend landlords whomever the tenants are is always a nightmare! Often more than the tenants.

There are currently fewer than 90,000 asylum seekers on the UK with its population of
69,600,000. In a group of 1000 people who live in the UK, only 12 would be asylum seekers.

Asylum seekers are too concentrated in a few places. That’s wrong, and Burnham is the first PM from either party to attempt to disperse them properly. We shall see. Possibly in these places they do challege public services. Hopefully that will ease.

But 12 people in 1000 is not enough overall to clog up the services you mentioned.

Are you confusing asylum seekers and refugees? The total is still well under 1% of the population. The NHS is badly overstretched, but these numbers do not explain it.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'success rate'. It sounds as though you haven't actually read the report before commenting.