Living next to asylum seeker HMO, ask me anything

Can they really claim UC? I am surprised but happy to be proved wrong.

Would have been the perfect house for women but...

Most stay close to a year. Some probably fall foul of some regulations and disappear sooner. Or do a runner.
I found a Home Office letter in my front garden recently. It contained a court decision to deport based on REPEAT history of offending. There were two cases associated with an individual : drug dealing/possession and fly-tipping. The letter went on about how criminal behaviour is not compatible with being "of good character". As such, a decision has been made to deport.
ALTERNATIVELY, the person could leave the country willingly and they will be given £2000 and a seat on a flight to do so...

Who knew!⬆️ We pay 2k to convicted criminals to leave willingly. What a strange country this is!

Asylum seekers cannot claim UC. They live on a pittance: a welfare payment of less than £50 per week if responsible for feeding themselves, or a payment of less than £10 (that is not a typo) per week if the accommodation provided board.

Refugees, like other UK passport holders, can. One does not become a refugee until
one’s claim of asylum is granted. Only a minority of claims are successful.

Is there a lock or bolt or similar on your loft access so it couldn't be opened from the attic? That's the stuff of nightmares.

It's outrageous that we are in this position and I'll never forgive the politicians who approved this.

I'm not one for having food delivered anyway but the more people who use these things, the more it encourages more of these men to come.

Yes, I don't think a woman living alone is a suitable neighbour to all male asylum seekers, particularly when we didn't have full height fences between properties (I had to build a fence), our lofts have no party wall and are mutually accessible and we have shared land in the form of that access alley. But hey, no one asked me or even considered the things I mentioned.

This on repeat: go to a country - claim asylum - work illegally cash in pocket - stay as long as the asylum process lasts and the government covers all living costs - leave when full financial support stops, whether the asylum is granted or not.
There's usually 12-18 months max before fully supported living stops. If asylum is granted, they are expected to look for work, house themselves and must start paying bills. At that point some leave, some stay and work, some present to the council as homeless and destitute and live on benefits (the men in the HMO opposite my house).

Imagine an 18 month long "working holiday" during which you didn't have to pay for accommodation, phone, internet, utilities, no council tax payments, no tax on illegal working, plus £200 a month pocket money. They must make a sizeable amount of cash!! Not all of them work. But more than half have something going on the side.

Asylum seekers cannot claim benefits. Those in an HMO have housing expenses covered and receive a weekly welfare payment of £49.19. That is to cover all of their other expenses.

You can see why they pick up the illegal Deliveroo work.

Yes, I don't think a woman living alone is a suitable neighbour to all male asylum seekers, particularly when we didn't have full height fences between properties (I had to build a fence), our lofts have no party wall and are mutually accessible and we have shared land in the form of that access alley. But hey, no one asked me or even considered the things I mentioned.

Asylum seekers can claim benefits in the form of universal credit. There are certain routes where public funds shouldn't be allowed this is often ignored, and the whole immigration system is so messy that the majority of migrants-whether seeking asylum or not- end up being supported with UC because the UK is a very expensive country to live in and these people almost always do not have the resources to fund themselves.

@nearlylovemyusername

Politics...Not really. More so I've developed distrust and acute dislike towards authorities. I want to ignore the lot of them and campaign for much tighter oversight of the shared housing market, larger and regularly imposed fines for bad landlords who run houses in poor condition, more police presence on streets like mine... But I also think it's too late and no one will be able to fix this mess. There is a certain tipping point when the number of HMOs and the decline in building conditions makes recovery impossible. Like the clearance of slums in the 20th Century. We are heading that way. Many inner-city terraced streets won't come back from this. I'm sad, it used to be beautiful here 😢

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 mostly complain about England to be fair! 😅 I don't blame them though, this street is a hell hole. Prostitutes on hard drugs proposition to them and they tell me how awful that is!

Usually they have quite nice things to say about their countries. About food and their mums. No one has ever mentioned war. One told me that his mum is from Syria, dad is Kurdish and that they are still in Kurdistan. But there are no jobs and he can't have a family with no job. I never pry into the asylum part and I think that is why they trust me. I pretend it doesn't exist.

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.

Terrace houses being turned into HMOs has destroyed my home town within a few short years. Every two / three terrace gets snapped up and turned into a minium 5 bed HMO. Changes everything about the town. The only good news OP that if you sold up, you have a developer bidding war

It's happening where I live ( NW ) and cheap terrace properties are being bought up by London landlords who put in for government contracts to house migrants.
What really angers the locals is that these absentee landlords use their own contractors to do the remodelling work and the local tradespeople lose out.
All this elevates the price of terraced properties so young couples can no longer get on the housing ladder.
People have asked for a meeting with our MP (Labour) but they have refused to meet them, saying they are 'too busy at Westminister'. Well, it looks like an awful lot of people in this area will now be 'too busy' to vote for them!
They have a sliver of a majority so I'm surprised they don't make more effort to serve their constituents.

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.

You discount my ‘issues with young professionals’ and their landlord though.

Obnoxious, unsafe, disrespectful, dangerous, inconvenient, stressful…to the point of wanting to move after 23 years here.

How would you differentiate? How can you make sure that the HMO is only for the young professionals that you have no issue with?

The loft issue should have come up on your survey when you bought the house. It would be an issue with any neighbour, and you should fix it regardless of who lives there.

Do you not accept that some of this is the reality of having neighbours?! You could have UK born and bred next door, smoking weed, up at all hours etc.

Re none of them mentioning war, it is worth remembering that in a country that is not at war, a person can be at very real risk of being murdered by government forces.

I actually met the landlord doing this in my street as he was sussing out the property after purchase. I asked him why he was doing this to our road as there was so much antisocial behaviour etc and he just shrugged :(

If the contractor is Mears the client is the council surely?! Therefore the property is a council owned.

That’s easy - you either let it to the council or not.

Not discounting the issues you’ve had but it is a very different beast living next to a HMO let to the council - these people are drug addicts, just out of prison, drug dealers, people who’ve taken so many drugs they are talking to the air, smashing door in if they forget their key. I’ve had 5 years of it.