The truth about immigrants and housing shortage

[Strawbal]

What is the truth? Is the country housing immigrants at the cost of our own housing crisis?

I'm bombarded with many differing viewpoints (on this and many issues) and I can’t sort the wheat from the chaff

Interesting first post.

Name change. I change names every couple of posts. I posted a short while ago on the celebrity marriage thread

I’m but of a data/statistics nerd and looked into this around the time of the general election.

It was difficult to conclude as I could find data based upon ethnicity which doesn’t tell us much.

I was trying to fact check about foreigners apparently taking up all the council houses in our local area.

The cost of the asylum seekers and the dodgy government contracts by the last government is eye watering.
I work in a government aligned role and I wince at the costs that I see, and the poor value for money that these contractors provide.
Local authorities are nearly bankrupted by the costs associated by the unaccompanied children arriving.
I simply don't see how it cannot not have an impact on housing. Not directly, but the money only comes from one source (us) and if its being spent in astronomical sums on housing asylum seekers, it isn't being spent elsewhere.

I never understood why countries like Dubai and Kuwait don't take refugees. They are wealthy enough.

Sounds like a great topic for Snopes UK

www.snopes.com/tag/uk/

One media outlet done a FOI to local authorities trying to ascertain the ethnic background of those in social housing. My local authority refused, citing community cohesion concerns which is fair enough.
From my own landing in a council block of flats, of the 5 owned by the council, 2 are white brits, 3 of 5 are african.

Dubai went bust recently and had to be bailed out by the other emirates.

Every one arriving needs a roof over their head. Whether they’re economically reliant on the taxpayer or not, they all need to be housed. How can it not have an impact?

Maybe if England stopped the right to buy and actually built social housing to replace the sold ones.

amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/26/councils-sell-off-more-houses-right-to-buy-failure

neweconomics.org/2024/05/more-than-4-in-10-council-homes-sold-under-right-to-buy-now-owned-by-private-landlords

Yes it’s this kind of “fact” that I’m trying to verify, (along with the fact that our local food bank is used predominately by professionals earning £70k, or women driving flash cars with lip fillers and hair extensions….)

I accept that immigration is adding to the strain on the country’s resources, I’d just like some factual, unbiased context around it

The truth is that successive governments have refused to invest in building new homes and have escaped criticism because people have focused on blaming immigrants for the lack of social housing

Not helpful - it’s these sorts of attitudes that provoke the disaffected into rioting.

It’s not a particularly 🇬🇧 -based moan, other European countries have the same problem.

There’s loads of reasons for the housing shortage. The biggest one is that people are living longer and take up family homes that would have gone to new families.

The other issue is that 🇬🇧 has much less housing stock (buildings) than places like France and Germany, so pressure for homes is higher.

Where immigration fits into this exactly, I know not. I don’t think anyone releases figures.

But I do know that asylum seekers (not immigrants) get social housing once they’re allowed to stay for obvious reasons (they haven’t got any money) and that councils are battling to fit them all in. No one budgeted for the small boats. Most refugees stay in hotels for 1-3 years before they get social housing.

I work with refugees. It’s absolutely fair enough to question why there’s resentment, and not racist. The solution is building more homes. Which the govt would have to do anyway.

Thank you @Lampzade

Well, assuming this is real:

The U.K. has a lot of immigrants.

For example, London has a lot of rich Russians living there.

In general if there are a fixed amount of houses then more people trying to buy them will push prices up.

Many many people from lots of places either move to or have houses in London and the South East. There has been a lot of house building in lots of those areas but the high demand for houses will have pushed prices up.

People in the U.K. tend to live in houses rather than flats. The government needs to focus on building more apartments

Maybe if England stopped the right to buy and actually built social housing to replace the sold ones.

This. The public housing stock never recovered from right to buy. Local councils are too impoverished now to do anything about it.

The housing shortage is made worse by empty homes, second homes and holiday let homes - there are around a million of these - that's 3 years worth of building

Recent ish data:

migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/migrants-and-housing-in-the-uk/

Near me there are a lot of council houses.
They are overwhelmingly white. Mostly because they were built some time ago and so the people who moved into them have stayed. Mostly retired couples now.

Many council houses in the past were let on a lifetime plus one tenancy - so if you had a council house and you died but your kids were living there they could take over the tenancy.

A council house we lived next to had been occupied since it was built in the 1930s by one family and when the old lady died her son inherited the tenancy (lifetime plus one). He is entitled to keep the tenancy until he dies.

In many places they really don't turn over very fast. This means demand is high for basically almost non existent spaces.

Thanks @Octavia64 and other posters

One media outlet done a FOI to local authorities trying to ascertain the ethnic background of those in social housing. My local authority refused, citing community cohesion concerns which is fair enough.
From my own landing in a council block of flats, of the 5 owned by the council, 2 are white brits, 3 of 5 are african.

That's not the OP's question. The question is about asylum seekers. There are plenty of non-white British people.

Or was that another thinly disguised racist thread.

@SoddingSoda - to you too. What is ethnic breakdown of those housed by LAs gong to tell you about housing asylum seekers?

There is a lot of misinformation out there based on some wanting to believe that asylum seekers ´take´ from British nationals. I know a Polish woman who told me categorically that in her (mainly rural) area refugees were being housed instantly in newly built council houses whereas ex soldiers were sleeping in the streets. When I asked where the council houses were, she couldn´t tell me (no record of new build council housing I could find) and she couldn´t tell me where the rough sleeping soldiers were to be found either. Still didn´t change her mind that she was right, despite zero evidence. Social media and certain sections of the press have a lot to answer for. Ironically she has just been given a council house herself, but apparently that is OK.

Don’t do a racism derail! Real answers exist.