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

Precisely, it's plain common sense.
Oddly I have often found people on the left saying how the illegals (for example) don't take housing or NHS capacity etc from British people. I can never understand their logic or why they feel the need to defend the indefensible by speaking nonsense.

Of course increasing the population increases pressure on housing - how can it not?

I also don't see why we should be sacrificing our countryside and precious agricultural land to accommodate immigration from countries that often have far lower population densities.

The U.K. has had a housing problem since forever.

It's had times when it has been better and times when it has been worse.

Lots of house building after ww1 (Addison act) and ww2. www.bristolideas.co.uk/projects/homes-for-heroes-100/housing-after-the-second-world-war/

Massive massive house shortage after the Second World War.

The British housing shortage wasn't caused by the 2008 financial crisis.

I should have qualified, I had no personal knowledge of soldiers sleeping rough -
I don’t doubt for a moment there aren’t.

Childish reply. Appreciate you're off school on summer hols but can't you go to the park with the other kids?!

The UK host 1% of refugees worldwide?

I've just looked that up and you're right but I had no idea it was that high. I know it sounds incredibly low but compared to the total population and land mass of the world it's high. And feels completely unsustainable when you think of how rapidly the population is growing worldwide.

At the same time though I don't think we can blame asylum seekers for the housing crisis as we're not really effectively housing them are we? They're often kept in hotels indefinitely or for years on end. It just costs an absolute fortune.

I want to live in a country that is welcoming to asylum seekers but the current system doesn't work for anyone anywhere. I think more needs to be done to improve the situation elsewhere in the world so people don't feel they have no option but to leave or to stay and suffer (which is often the only option for women).

How do you know that they don't? Besides, Dubai isn't a country. It is a city in the United Arab Emirates.

Why is everyone assuming social housing, when OP just says 'housing'? If immigrants rent privately or buy that still puts pressure on housing generally.

But obviously it's a debate whether that means we should have less immigration or if instead we should build more houses.

Must admit, in my area in the past 5 years, there has been a huge increase in immigrants living here. It's a mix of owned, private landlords and social housing in the area (talking maybe 1.5 mile radius) I've not given a lot of thought to whether they own, private rent or social rent, but it has been noticed that there has been a noticeable impact to the public services (medical, dentist and education notably but could be other contributing factors too) that's just in my immediate area too, it's 3ven higher in other areas if the city.
They are always constantly building on any bit of green space, and buying up large shopping spaces to convert into housing. I do quite a bit of wildlife work and I am seeing a lot of wildlife displacement due to all the green space being built on. I have quite a few neighbours knocking lately to ask advice on increased wildlife they've suddenly been finding in their gardens.

We are limited on space in the UK, we are a tiny country with a huge population. Legal immigration shouldn't really be an issue, but there needs to be more regulations in place overall.

This is one of the issues, repeated governments hide the truth as they know the public won't like it. Where numbers are available (ethnicity in prison for example), then copious excuses will rapidly follow to justify disparities between ethnicities.
In a grown up world you need numbers and statistics to inform decisions and policies. But "community cohesion" means burying the truth in case someone gets upset or worse still the public find out the truth god forbid.

OP posted a legitimate question - if you don't like then that's fine.
But there's no need for you to ridicule her.
Someone, (I don't know who but someone on MN will), once said that sarcasm is the lowest form of wit.
In your case he/she was correct!

Nor do I especially when the housing is built on flood plains.

Also I want to keep the green belt

One factor that hasn’t been mentioned is short-term letting - AirBnB and equivalents. My understanding is that in some cities - Edinburgh, for example - a lot of accommodation that would previously have been let long term is now let short term by the week or two to those who have homes elsewhere. That creates a shortage of longer term rented accommodation for locals.

We don't hear birdsong like we used to.

Yes constant building and concreting and more cars and pollution

Explain that to me. Explain how "the disaffected" are provoked into going into areas they don't live in to beat up the police and attack anyone who isn't white.

Same with me to be honest, it might be different outside London though. Plus the people I know are all legal migrants and I guess most people are commenting on illegal migration

Just to add too, my DP owns a house in the North West, that he uses for work over there. It's a small village type place outside of a biggish town and was never really a place where you would find immigration, until recently. There seems to have been quite a few immigrants moving there in the past 2 years and the locals have been campaigning for a while about the building work on some beautiful land there with a lot of wildlife and the fact the council are trying to build on green belt land.

I think part of the reason so many have become angry is that there is a lack of information which would answer the OP’s question. This allows rumour and misinformation to spread, compounded by the impression that those in power are not honest with the public and have hidden agendas. The government needs to be open and honest about this. I would go so far as to say that democracy is undermined because the public do not have a clear picture of the issues and their causes and this makes it difficult to vote for policies.

Arabs in Dubai etc have no special regard for co-religionaries and more, their states are built on cheap pseudo slave labour from e.g. Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, all countries with large Muslim populations or a majority. I've been and seen it.

They don't take refugees because they like the status quo ante of wealth and power without responsibility. . Plus, they saw what happened to Jordan in 1970 (so-called "Black September") when Palestinian refugees attempted a coup.

In my area it's pretty clear student housing is the issue. The city is swamped with houses that have been divided into 5 or 6 bed rooms.

I just did a rental house check on Rightmove. The local housing rate for the area 2 bed property is about £800. I put £900 as the search and it's returned 0 properties with 2 bed and 11 one bed flats above shops. That figure includes house share. Put student housing and 186 properties come up for £900. It doesn't include any of the university owned properties.

A person who has leave to remain has the right to apply on the housing register. People who don't have leave to remain or are otherwise not eligible, ie not habitually resident etc cannot apply. The way a local authority discharges its duty might involve assistance with a deposit for private rent.

That's actually a really good point. I guess there might need to be a consideration on reducing legal migration if needed. But are there enough trained British people to do the jobs migrants do? The NHS in particular relies heavily on foreign doctors and nurses. More work needs to be done on upskilling the local population and this work needs to start from supporting children in less privileged areas in the UK

@runrabbitruns.There are plenty of black,and mixed race british born people occupying council houses who have never worked..so your silly argument makes no sense..just because you are white,in social housing and unemployed does not make you racist...i find your comment derogatory and offensive..Just one of many who despise the white working class and lump us all together under one label..rayyycist..

Agreed.

I now have 8 bird feeders in my garden for different types of birds because of the shrinking land area they use to feed on and turned a big patch of my back garden into a wild area for the bees and insects. All the new builds have concrete front gardens and turfed back gardens, and more people are paving over their land for ease. It's just getting silly now.

This is literally what I referred to:

Theres data on ETHNICITY but that’s pretty much useless when discussing immigration.

I’m sure we can all agree ethnicity is different from nationality.

If not, I think you share values with a very short, angry man with a moustache who used to live in Germany..