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

It's a myth that there are people who've 'never worked a day in their life'.

UC sanctions are harsh.

The only people who aren't in long term employment are the disabled or carers, do you not consider care work, work?

Because they don't want them.

Nice demonisation of people on benefits there.

Not all are knuckle dragging thugs you know?

Plenty on benefits are highly qualified and experienced ex professionals who have fallen on hard times due to disability/caring responsibilities/ escaping abuse etc.

They have 28 days to move out. There's no way they can get a job and put down a deposit in that time so most move into social housing. Then when they do get jobs (often high skill/high pay) as they have experience/qualifications from abroad they stay in those social homes as they are entitled to. But it's giving a permanent solution to something which is a temporary problem.

40% of right to buy homes are now in the hands of private landlords.

This is a huge problem for everyone.

The Housing benefit/housing element of UC bill has ballooned because instead of paying lower social rents we are all paying towards higher private rents.

(Yes I'm aware not everyone renting receives housing cost help).

Inexplicably, when Mrs T introduced the right to buy, councils were not allowed to replace housing stock, they had to use what little money they got from each sale, to other pots.
So, in reality, those who have bought social housing contributed to the start of the social housing shortage. Selfishly, they benefitted for years from low rents and other perks of being a council tenant before 1990, then took that stock for a song, thereby depriving those who needed social housing

Nobody said they were. The point that’s often made is that immigrants are taking jobs - obviously if you already have a job then I haven’t taken yours. I don’t think random people on benefits can be matched into any job and If you think there are an abundance of doctors not working due to disabilities/escaping abuse/caring responsibilities and they can’t get back to work in the NHS because immigrants are stealing their jobs that’s your prerogative although I would be fascinated to see actual data in relation to this.

This is utter nonsense. Middle class people who live in middle class bubbles have no idea about entire areas of people who know exactly how to play the system in order to continue a life on benefits.

Why is it so difficult to believe that people are willing to lie about being too sick to work? Not everyone will lie of course, but if you live on a council estate for any length of time and talk to people at the local council pub your eyes will be opened .

The system is vulnerable to people who know what to say. Many illnesses are unable to be diagnosed conclusively with a scan and are open to a doctors discretion and information given by the patient.

It’s laughable just how naive the general public is.

Load of rubbish. I live in a housing association development by the way.

This is complete waffle. It has taken 'knowing just what to say' to get more severely disabled son the support he needs, all his life. All that is irrelevant though without a ton of paperwork! How are all these apparently healthy and able people getting all of these things without actual evidence? You need a lot of it

I agree with 'never worked a day in their life' being a general myth, but disagree that 'only people who aren't in long term employment are the disabled or carers.'

Here we have plenty who live on what is referred to as 'Uc'n-streams.'
The 'streams' are various combined 'enterprises' which qualify as streams if they involve very low input for the income received.

So dealing drugs would be working, but letting your flat be a cutting house for one wouldn't, and would be a stream.
Renting out a room would be working, renting use of your address a stream.
There's a debate on whether shoplifting is considered work or a stream depending on frequency and planned or opportunistic, and apparently getting the kids doing mukbang is only a stream if they do all the uploading, filming ect themselves.

They're on UC while they can and the less smart do get sanctioned routinely but the rent still gets paid and they're quite adept at getting hardship payments. The smart quit UC prior to sanctions for a bit to avoid them. They then go onto income 'streams' that generally aren't what anyone really wants to be doing for survival for a bit and then back onto UC.

It isn't for me but it isn't hard to do that if it's how you want to live your life and accept the price paid. Some of it is harmless enough, but generally the more it pays the more it isn't.

They need to stop second h omes plus air bnb. Keep all existing ones but make it illegal to have any new ones going forward. Needs rushing through Parliament.

There is a massive difference between 'areas of people who know exactly how to play the system in order to continue a life on benefits' more generally, and whole areas of people succeeding in hoodwinking GP's/NHS into believing them sick enough to be on sick/disability benefits specifically, for life.

Off course there is a percentage of scammers, periodically they get caught.
But you're naive if you think Dave who publicly laughs down the pub that he gets benefits for his 'bad back' and just tells the Doc and gets signed off 'easy peasie' 'isn't he just a cheeky chappie grifter- everyone does it,' isn't actually quietly actually getting it for his genuine Bi polar disorder and depression that's lost him every job he's tried to do.

Or as came out here, 'Jasmin' who told everyone she was fiddling disability and UC, when she wasn't, she was prostituting and didn't fancy the local judgement.

@runrabbitruns

I don't live in a middle class bubble! 🤣

I've lived & worked & volunteered in very deprived areas all my life.

I'm surprised how many in dire circumstances do continue to work even when they don't 'have' to.

The only ones I'd met who'd never worked were very disabled people, people with very severe addictions, men who are always in & out of prison, Mums who've had young DCs from teens til their 40s and those who care for all the people, babies, disabled people, old people who need it.

The young fit and capable all work.

I also don't live in a middle class bubble. I'm carer reliant disabled, self employed, constantly scrabbling for contracts and often working under NMW.
Of course I continue to work when I theoretically 'don't have to' and I face resentment in many quarters for it.
It's the only way I have any rights here, and plenty of people who don't want to, so one of them is welcome to whatever I 'might be entitled to' if they want to jump through the hoops for it.

Immigration is just one of a whole lot of factors as to why there is a housing shortage.
I couldn't ever get my children into decent schools because the sharp elbowed middle classes brought up all the housing and developed every last space around any half decent school, moved in with gran for a year or pretended to, forged addresses, etc to ensure their children got our local school places and we were forced to travel past them across the borough to undesirable low performing schools.
The final indignity was when they started moving school gates to favor private housing and increase mileage for SH really close to the schools.
Didn't hear much outrage then.

Sorry but what do you mean by light touch building regulations. As someone who has dealt with buidling control and updates to building regs for the past 20 plus years its the opposite. Insulation sound and thermal requirements are more onerous, the requirements for dwellings to be adaptable for wheelchair users has increased, the need for renewable energy sources, fire regs has tightened, every turn the standards have increased.

Existing housing, anything rented now has a minimum EPC standard, which the previous government was scheduled to tighten further with C a minimum. I fully expect this governemenf to do the same.

In England the percentage bult on is higher closer to 11%, which is higher than most other counties and I think all in Europe. There have been plenty of reports regarding ecology, our lack of ability to feed ourselves due to land shortages. Its not as simple as buikd more on green spaces.

How does it work in other European countries.

Is the allocation of social housing similar to the UK?

Most of Europe has much less social housing than the uk.

But private renting is cheaper and more secure.

What a pile of tripe..where did you read that from? Some benefit agency fraudsters handbook circa 1999?..When did any council ever anywhere, own or run pubs on council estates? So every council tenant...but only the great unwashed,lazy junkie,thick gormless white tenants all know how to play the system..laughable and from a very middle class furtive imagination..I find it so predictable on a site like this,that it seems totally ok to denigrate the white working class and blame them for everything,robbing,lying,drug running, all the same old rhetoric that we are all thick as shit racists..its strange how its mostly white poor girls/women who end up with mixed race kids by black,pakistani,indian,jamaican,african men...yet strangely still retain their racist attitudes specially towards immigrants..The middle classes don't generally have babies with pakistani or afghanistani or roma men, nor do their uni attending daughters,yet they seem to be the font of all knowledge concerning the habits and lifestyle of the white working class or any white tenants in council housing..Im not on here to educate you on the reality of being white and poor, you already know how we live apparantly and if the working class were mostly black people,this offensive racism towards whites wouldnt exist..Immigrants are a problem because they end up mostly in already deprived destitute shit holes that are then turned into ghettos,and muslims do not integrate unless they want a shag with you or your daughters..the younger the better.Am i being racist? No im not because i live in this hell..to want to escape your country for a better way of life is comendable,but don't then try and force your ways on our communities..its simple really but you darent offer your lived opinion to middle class know alls because you are shouted down as a thick chav racist.I think its disgusting how poor whites can be labelled and called the most vile names with impunity by the middle classes but if the same terminology was used against any other race there would be hell to pay.The poor,destitute and poverty stricken are still to this day blamed for being poor,and its just so predictable and depressing, it's almost as though the downfall of society is all the fault of just this class of people.laugh as much as you want and shout out that im talking bullshit,but every word im saying is the truth..Don't get all comfy and snug in your safe little middle class bubbles either because have you ever wondered where your so loving and loyal husband or boyfriend is? Well i can tell you that many white middle class lads, older and very old men often come..literally.. into these working class dens of depravity to use the service of 'working girls', and even i was amazed by just who some of these men were and how well off, but mean they were...its so comforting to know that the days of Dickens and the middle classes attitudes are still the same..don't lump us altogether and sneer and insult us and think you know one grain of our lives..not until you've spent one day in our shoes just trying to make it through another day of drudgery or misery..rant over but it really gets my hackles up the way you lot get away with slagging us off with your blatant anti white racism...

@TRULYSCRUMPTIOUSME

Could you please use paragraphs? It's difficult to read and headache-inducing without paragraphs.

Having spent all my adult life working in the public sector I can say that planning/building control / private sector housing are not ' light touch'. What there is however is often a very small workforce trying to deal with huge issues within the legislation. So if you take inspections of houses which have serious disrepair. There just aren't enough qualified people, it takes time to do the inspection and then ensure the landlord carries out the repairs.
And many building regulations are now self certified, so for example double glazers can do the certificate for installing double glazing.
And, empty homes. I worked next to a young man who dealt with trying to get empty homes back in use. God, he had the patience of a saint. Lots of work, sometimes little to show for it.

This is one of the big issues. A few years ago I was living in Germany with a partner for a few months. We had a lovely one bed flat in the city centre. We had to rent through an agency that rented to "foreigners" so paid a premium. It was £700 a month. Partner was earning approx. £2500 p/m (net) in a sales role. My partners colleagues quipped that we must be renting a "mansion" at that cost, so their rent was obviously considerably cheaper.

Likewise the security. I don't know the ins and outs of how this is achieved, but my European GP's rented the same flat from the day they were married to the day they died. All the neighbours in their block had also lived there the majority of their lives.

If we had a rental system like this, we'd need a lot less social housing.

I don't think it is that easy in Germany in all areas. I remember the Financial Times had an item about housing in Berlin not long ago and also just saw this
https://www.dw.com/en/german-housing-crisis-finding-a-home-like-winning-the-lottery/a-68840785

@rioting24 Don't read my posts then you fuckwit.

100% used to be in the hands of landlords, albeit council. Your point is?

There's a larger population now. That requires more housing. Owned or rented.