Where will the refugees coming to the UK live?

[Meeklynamechanged]

In no way a goady thread, I fully support helping the people fleeing such horrid circumstances, but genuine question.. where will they live? Where do we put people?

Where I live we have people waiting 10 years for a council property. Most areas around the UK have a huge deficit in available housing that doesn't meet demand.

With so many families stuck in overcrowded hostels and B&B's, families of 5 in 1 bed flats, I can't see where all of the required the housing will come from?

Several houses on my street are lived in by asylum seekers. I do not know who owns the houses (I don't think it's the council) but they are very run down.

@Strawberrirose

They are also lots of empty buildings that could be be converted to housing.

Not to mention more than 250,000 homes that have been empty for more than 6 months.

@SchrodingersImmigrant

Maybe it will make the councils repair that thousands of properties they left to rot?

Maybe it will encourage the government to make sure that councils have the funds they need to bring empty properties up to the standard they need to be so the councils can let them out.

@AttaGirrrrl

I’d take ‘family of five in a one bedroom flat’ over ‘being killed for going to school’, so I don’t think it much matters where refugees go, so long as it’s somewhere safe.

Exactly. People terrified for their lives will take anything to survive. I think people forget how desperate they are. It's a very sad situation.

Several years ago In my small market town the local churches organised accommodation for Syrian families. And helped them get work too. We already have several Afghan families in the next town.

@MariposaLilly, why did you come back to the UK then ?

@JackieCollinshasnoauthority

Wales. We've abolished right to buy, we're investing in social housing and we want to welcome refugees.

Scotland as well. No right to buy here either and we welcome refugees.

My heart breaks for these families having to flee and leave everything behind but we do have a housing crisis in the UK. In most areas it's a good 3 year wait to be housed and that's pretty good but it's so wrong so if theirs more people taking the housing that are coming as a refuge and need somewhere to go.
What happens to the ones that have been waiting years ?
The country is only small compared to America, we have no room we're struggling to house our own as it is.
Shoot me for saying it but it's true. As much as I'd love to help an I do feel for these people it's shocking and disgusting but....

Refugees welcome in Scotland. Developing appropriate accommodation and services would be a challenge though. Have started donating to the Scottish Refugee Council

@ISpyCobraKai

I have two spare rooms, no way would I offer them to strangers to me, who probably need a lot of help that I can't provide.

Me too! I know I'll get flamed for this, but I don't want to put myself and my family at risk.

42.4 per 1,000 homes sit unused in The City of London, making it the British council with the highest proportion of empty houses. It is also the only London council to feature in the national top 10.26 Jul 2021

42 homes out of a thousand isnt many though and I’m not an expert on the city of Lindon but my understanding is that it isn’t a residential area? So in real terms that isn’t many properties.

Chuckling at the poster trying to persuade everyone that the royal residences are crumbling wrecks where the heating doesn’t work and you have to wait two hours to get the stove going to make a cup of tea..

@Twatterati

I volunteer for a charity that supports refugees and asylum seekers once they arrive in the UK.

You'd be horrified if you saw the state of the housing they are placed in. Honestly, it is horrendous, they are often barely habitable. Remember also that these poor souls arrive with nothing - all their furniture, clothing, kitchen utensils, bedding etc etc are ones that have been donated. The complete lack of provision is shocking.

Many, many asylum seekers/refugees are re-located to the centre of one of our grimmest, poorest and most rundown cities as that is where the housing is cheapest in the country. Families are placed in HMOs, sharing bathroom and kitchen facilities with other families, or in desperately neglected and rundown homes. These places are filthy to begin with and don't improve with overcrowding.

The parent(s) are so often just shells of themselves, having seen such tragedy in their home country. The journey is horrendous and many families are torn apart and broken before even making the trip.

What I can't emphasise enough is that the reality is NOT what the media would lead us to believe. They DO NOT get amazing housing, loads of benefits etc. The 'normal' rules don't apply, they don't jump the queue, they are living below the poverty line and applications for their leave to remain can take YEARS. They rely on food donations, food banks, charities and kind hearted neighbours to just survive. Mental health suffers because they're so isolated (as they're not permitted to find employment until they have leave to remain) and many do voluntary work themselves just to get out the house.

As a nation, we should actually be embarrassed and ashamed at the 'refuge' we provide as it isn't even the bare minimum. No one is anywhere near living the life of Riley. Far, far from it.

Yes, this. I have taught children from asylum seeking families who have been living in a single room in rat infested homeless hostels. For years. They may have use of a kitchen on another floor. One family had to escort their children to the toilet every time because it felt so unsafe.

The Home Office is legally required to grant accommodation and support to asylum seekers who are waiting on their claims, or whose claims have been refused but who aren’t able to leave the UK. Home Office accommodation includes disused army barracks, B&Bs etc. It’s not social housing (not that there is much of that).

Application claims can take months or years in some cases and while they wait they are not allowed to work.

Those who are accepted as refugees are given just 28 days to vacate their Home Office accommodation. They can apply for UC, but there is usually a gap of weeks/months, where they have no money at all. With financial support stopped, and no preferential treatment regarding the allocation of social housing, many are then homeless.

@MariposaLilly happy to swap you with an Afghsn refugee.
The Taliban regime should suit you and your right wing views.

An entire hotel local to us has been set aside for asylum seekers. All male environment currently so not sure where families with mixed sex adults or children would go.

I returned to the UK a few years ago after living in the US for almost 50 years. I didn't recognize my own country. Good lord the UK is turning into a overcrowded shit-hole with vandalism, poverty, crime and even people attacking each other in the street for just looking at them the wrong way. Thank Lefty politics did that! It won't be too many more years before British people are fleeing the mess you are creating just so you can feel morally superior and not at all racist.

If it's so awful here, why are you staying, @MariposaLilly? That would free up a home for Afghan refugees.

And we haven't had a "Lefty" government since the 1970s.

well we have had syrian refugees fairly recently.
we receive refugees every day via dinghies.

It's only 20,000 people. Even if it was double or triple or more it should still be done. These are human beings and they need to be safe. I expect it's going to be tough. I expect we'll get the usual from the racists and the nimbys but what's happening in Afghanistan and what we all know will soon happen is so horrific that we must help. Yes, realistically things may get a bit harder here in some ways/areas but if we wait until the UK is a paradise before we help others it'll never happen. I'd rather pay more tax and have to share services than watch more and more reports of girls murdered for going to school, women executed for being outside without a male relative, sex slavery etc etc, and know that at least some of those people could have been safe here.

God bless them all. Hopefully in Scotland we’ll have something similar to the resettlement scheme for Syrian refugees.

I heard an advert on my local radio station yesterday evening asking for people to open their homes and welcome Afghan families into their spare rooms.