Or is it unreasonable to complain about overcrowding in free accommodation?

[SomeGuy]

Just caught end of local news, they had a feature about overcrowding in London council housing. They showed a council flat, not quite sure how big it was, but it was occupied by three generations of an Asian Muslim family (a couple were wearing jilbabs), 8 in all, but apparently they count as 6 1/2 people for overcrowding because children under 1 don't count (not sure where the 1/2 comes from).

Anyway my wife's response was 'if they don't like it, they should go back where they came from' (DW is an immigrant, and shared a bed with her sister growing up - they had 7 people in two bedrooms, some would sleep on mats on the floor), given that much worse/more cramped conditions are I'm sure completely normal where they came from. If DW's parents had they wanted a bigger house they'd have to pay for it, though they'd tend to spend the money expanding their business rather than home improvements.

They had an exterior shot of the flat, which is very prime real estate, central London, worth hundreds of thousands of pounds to buy, or several thousand per month on the open market.

Apparently Boris has promised to half overcrowding in 20 years, but it seems odd to me, obviously a family of 8 is fairly normal in Afghanistan/wherever (in large part because they don't see personal space as so important and so you can fit a lot of people in to a small place) but it really doesn't fit into central London, especially not when the taxpayer is footing the bill.

oh FFS

\link{http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/jul/07/social-housing-immigration-bnp/here}

1.8% of immigrants housed in social housing have lived in the UK for less than 5yrs.

oh for crying out loud

here

Asylum shopping?

Got there in the end Faq - yes that was the report I was talking about.

• I'm usually so good at links too

Well the only immigrants I've ever come across wouldn't be seen dead in social housing they rent privately in £4,000 a month houses and claim housing benefit, the far more intelligent way to do things [grins]

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Misquoted:

not "only 1.8% of immigrants living in social housing have moved here in the last 5 years"

but rather

"only 1.8% of people living in social housing are immigrants that have moved here in the last 5 years"

Which doesn't exactly rebutt the "Claims that immigrants are given priority access to social housing".

because what you'd want to know then is about NEW social housing allocation - what proportion is going to immigrants. If people are complaining about 'queue jumping', you need to look at the queue, not those who are already in social housing for 30 years.

The waiting lists for social housing are presumably very long, and I would guess few new people actually get given housing each year, so it wouldn't actually take very many Afghan asylum seekers with average 6.6 children arriving in a certain area (and obviously going straight to the top of the queue) to create a perception of queue jumping.

The fact that 6 children is completely normal in Afghanistan but completely abnormal in the UK and that priority is based on having more children does mean that a newly arrived Afghan family will most likely stack up very well in housing points terms against British applicants.

If you live in an area of high immigration from cultures with large families, I would be surprised if you would ever get social housing, unless you had particularly acute needs. Obviously this will cause resentment.

no I said DH and I were not entitled to go on the list because of his (then) immigration status.

aslyum seeker housing comes under a different category - all of it is funded from an entirely different source to social housing. And the vast majority (in fact in a lot of areas all) of it is set up with deals with private landlords.

does it matter which way you word it - there's obviously not that much "fast tracking" if only 1.8% of them only moved here in the last 5 years!

a newly arrived Afghan family wouldn't be entitled to social housing.

They may (if they're incredibly lucky) be eligible for housing if they're asylum seekers. If they're economic migrants they're not allowed to even go on the list for an extended period of time. Depending on their visa - that could be never!

we didn't need a frigging 4 bedroom house. We needed a 2 bedroom house!

And that was irrelevant because WE WERE NOT ALLOWED TO GO THE WAITING LIST.

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yes but he wasn't here on a work permit - he was on a spousal visa (or whatever it's called now)

I am British - had I decided to up stick and leave him they'd have house me in no time at all.

We didn't realise the situation with the adults with the disabilities would deteriorate so rapidly with so many people in the house when we first decided to move to the UK.

hey - perhaps we should have got him to apply for asylum and get free housing that way........oh no - sorry forgot - we'd have ended up in the same place and if the time scale for many applicants is anything to go by he'd probably still not be allowed to work now as he'd still be waiting for a decision.

the majority of "social" housing that was taken over (and actually not much of it - most of it is deal with private landlords and new builds specifically for the purpose of housing the lucky few who get given housing) is the old crap stuff which no-one else wants, and the council can't be arsed to make habitable for the more fussy (long term residents/citizens) of this country to live in.

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no he could have applied for asylum - genuinely - and if he wasn't genuine he would have been refused - as the majority of asylum seekers are.

We moved here with the intention of him finding work - and indeed he did his first part time work 3 weeks after arriving in the country. We had planned to stay in the house for a few years where we were. But that was before the "side effects" of living in overcrowded accommodation became apparent on the other adults in the house.

We moved from his home country - which had refused to renew my visa due to political tensions with the UK at the time. It wasn't safe for either of us to stay there.

I have NO issues with the way the system works - I'm trying to rebutt some frankly ridiculous ideas that some people have on this thread that immigrants from outside the Eu can just waltz into the UK and into social housing and start claiming benefits.

those asylum seeker homes are NOT PAID FOR BY THE COUNCIL. Immigrants that happen to be home in the council houses will be EU citizens that have been through the same criteria as anyone else on the list. So - they got lucky and got the nice houses. Round here they all end up on the same shitty estates - "natives" and immigrants alike.

my god there are some truly ignorant daily mail/BNP believing people on this thread.

ALL asylum accommodation is provided by the UK Border Agency - not local councils. And if they end up in your local area - they weren't put their by your council either.

the lack of social housing has got fuck all to do with the immgrants or asylum seekers - it's got everything to do with the "clever" idea to let social tenants buy their homes.

Unfortunately most people know little about housing allocation..and the meedia/gov are happy to keep it that way..

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