The woman who lives in a shed: How London landlords are cashing in.

[Ryoko]

Article from the Guardian HERE

I'd just like to say it's all very well and good the councils moaning but what they are going to do other then put people out on the streets?, these people would be homeless or stuck in bedsits and B&Bs for years on end while languishing on the council housing lists.

My former flat was a studio one in a converted Victorian house, 22 flats some with there own shower/toilet others shared one on the ground floor, bed bugs, mice and carpet beetles, faulty fire alarm system that the fire brigade threatened legal action over several times and no lock on the main door, next door to me lived a family of 4 who washed their baby bottles in the communal washing machine, a man died after falling thru the banisters on the 2nd floor when drunk. Yet the council thought the place was fine, they inspected it several times, by the time I moved out about a quarter of the residents where put there by Ealing council while they wanted for a council place.

We need change, I see "Luxury apartments" springing up everywhere, yet years down the line these places still have the sales suite open, I see so called affordable housing being built that isn't affordable for those earning less then 30k a year (the national average is 24k) and even if they could afford them they are unsuitable for a family with young children as they have open plan kitchen and living room areas (what idiots design these things?). We need real affordable homes and a massive increase in council and HA places, we need to shake off the obsession with dolls house style homes and embrace the fact we are a massive city and the only way we can build is up with more high rise buildings.

hear hear minishimi

That's not realistic though, is it?

You arrive from war torn Somalia, traumatised after the shop you owned was taken from you and your family home burned, you escaped with your life, three children and nothing else, you have no idea where your husband or other two children are but think they are probably dead. You can't speak English, you have no money.

Are you going to really suggesting that these people just get a camper van and go around the country, really??? Because that's the type of people who live in slum dwellings. People who have fled from their countries, who have faced terrible times. I worked there and saw people who had been starved, tortured, shot, beaten, raped, held in forced marriages, escaped...no contact with their children who they had in those marriages. People who our own army have bombed. People who can't speak English, who are too traumatised to work, too disabled from their injuries.

For example, one lady had seen her husband's head cut off in front of her. Can you imagine that??? She has lived for 22 years in this country, is on benefits and speaks speaks no English. She lives alone and speaks to no one except a worker from an outreach group.

I think politicians really need to hear these stories....actually local MP's do but until the public start having sensible debates about immigration then I think it is easier for them to bury their heads in the sand and blame Thatcher for selling off the council houses...move on, deal with today's issues.

Thatcher ruined lives for many. It's hard to forget what a mess she made of the country....

Britain really is a soft touch, if you have crappy conditions in your own country just migrate to the UK, that way you can claim all the benefits of the day...the benefits system is all wrong here in the UK.

More council housing is needed. There's too much emphasis on buying these days. Nothing wrong with renting IMO.

I'm sorry but why should someone from Somalia come and live in London? for one thing this is a massive country, go see how many black people there are in Cornwall for example, why are we not spreading the immigrants around instead of throwing them all in the same area?.

And thats not to mention the fact under international law asylum seekers are meant to seek shelter in the nearest safe country, now there are a hell of a lot of safe countries between here and Somalia.

It's no wonder everyone gets so pissed off, we are not stupid, we know people have passed via many safe countries before coming here, we know these people are not all ways from war torn areas, many lie. Many pay traffickers thousands of pounds to be smuggled over here.

And then we see them get benefits having never contributed, get fast tracked on the housing lists rather then being treated equally and standing in line like everyone else.

Ryoko - how do they get fast tracked onto the housing lists?

These are the priority bands for Ealing
www.locata.org.uk/ealing/Content.aspx?wkid=15

Where do you think asylum seekers fit on this list?

A.

Most people end up D, including me, yes pregnant woman and boyfriend in studio flat with faulty fire alarm system, dodgy electrics, virtually no heating (it was in a locked cupboard he only turned it on in November and two years in a row it broke down over Christmas), water regularly coming in the ceiling in the bathroom and over the bed, infested with rodents and various other things, no lock on the main door and we where classed as D (AKA no chance, get stuffed).

Seeing as we are going to talk about Ealing (my home turf and the council my relative worked for) perhaps you could tell me where all the Somalian men are living? because according to Ealing council records 80% of the Somalian residents of the the various estates is a single mother yet their are hundreds of Somalian men registered as mini cab drivers in the area claiming they are of no fixed abode?.

Ryoko - but claiming benefits in not dependant on having contributed...for anyone in the UK.

and i dont understand how you think the system benefits assylum seekers? it seems open to abuse but that is surely a different topic....

I once knew two brothers from Afghanistan who kept complaining that it took the council (yes Ealing) 6 months to give them a flat and then they had to share. They wouldn't give them one each and they where actually annoyed at that, they seemed to think 6 months was a long time and that they should have been given a flat each.

people are passing thru perfectly good safe countries to get here for what? they are clearly hearing things about being given everything on a plate.

Ryoko - I know some people who are refugees. They came here as asylum seekers and their asylum claims were upheld. These a people who have had family members murdered for supporting the wrong political party. Its a huge wrench to know you might never see your family again (refugees will loose their refugee status if they travel back to their home country), to have to leave your country of birth because there are people in your own country who want to kill you because of what you believe or represent. The people I know aren't here for what they can get but because they couldn't stay where they were.

I understand your frustration with bogus asylum seekers and people who abuse the immigration system i.e. student visas but no studying, but genuine asylum seekers have already had a horrible time so a bit of compassion wouldn't go amiss.

The lack of decent affordable social or private rental housing is a separate issue and I really don't think it is influenced much by the relatively small number of people granted asylum every year.

It's not a different topic when people come here expecting to end up in a council house.

it all adds up, people are flooding into London, Southall is an area of high immigration it's not coincidence that the shed houses are there, London is full of building projects and EU migrants wanting to send as much cash home as possible, it's no coincidence that massive house shares are here, then there is just the poor average worker stuck in the whole overpriced nature of the area.

It all feeds in, there is not one cause, mass immigration/asylum seekers they are all put here, the migrants all come here looking for work and those who where brought up here are stuffed as well and the prices on the railway feed into it too, commuting is getting so expensive.

A million problems all adding in and no one tackling any of them.

In fact in the UK we receive less asylum applications per 1000 of the population than in Europe

migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/briefings/migration-uk-asylum

"Asylum claims in the UK per capita are below the European average: for 2010, the UK received 0.37 asylum applications per 1000 inhabitants, compared to 0.55 across Europe"

So the idea that all these asylum seekers are making a beeline for the UK seems to be incorrect as our figures are lower than the European average.

It is affected when they all get dumped in the same few areas. why do they all come/get dumped in London and a few other big cities like Birmingham?.

Theres a whole country out there, We need some sort of population orders, this area full no more migrants/immigrants please place them in this area which has a low number and lots of housing stock.

Plus they should be claiming asylum in the first safe country, why are they not doing that? what is so attractive about here that they want to come here and in some cases live in a shed?.

Here is the answer to your first safe country question. It is not a straightforward as it might first seem.

www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2010/sep/21/claim-asylum-uk-legal-position

Refugees make up less than 0.5% of the UK population so I don't really think they should be the focus.

They are not the focus merely part of the problem, a problem that isn't being tackled at all in anyway. all they (councils) are doing is throwing people out of places thats not tackling anything, thats not stopping things getting worse, it's like seeing a dossier in your doorway and just moving them on and saying you are tackling the problem of homelessness.

People need to stop coming to London, London councils need to stop accepting immigrants (it's hard to stop people who work moving anywhere they like but easy to tell someone you are paying benefits and housing where they can live), London needs to build more high rises, rents need to be capped, companies need to sod off and spread the wealth to other parts, transport needs to be cheaper, more affordable homes (that actually are) need to be built, empty properties used possibly forcefully by means of a tax on empty places that will make the shops rent the flats above them out).

SinisterBuggyMonth (great name BTW)

That's a fair point.

Ryoko one of the ways to solve the problem about people coming here for a free council flat, is to make council housing means tested. We subsidise the councils to provide low cost housing for... wait for it... anyone who has, could have been 20 years ago, had a need and been elligible. They may be millionaires now but the taxpayer still subsidises their home.

If the state only funded those in genuine need, there would be more to go round. People who have 'exercised their right to buy' have also been subsidised, in a round about way, to the tune of hundreds of thousands of pounds. Because when their home is crossed off the council stock, the state, taxpayer, council, pays for a new one to be built.

Pissups and breweries spring to mind.

I live in Edmonton, which has a fairly similar demographic to Southall (different ethnicities) and similar problems. We are seeing the same shanties built in gardens. The people who mostly seem to live in them here are the relatives of the last generation of immigrants who often came to study or for a visit but didn't ever go home.

They do "work" for their relatives (childcare, cleaning, transport, construction), or for friends of their relatives on the black market, and the extended family/clan tradition of many of these families means that the money of the legitimate earner is trickled down to the new-comers who support the family in other ways.

The original family have some seed money to start with buy there first property to house the extended family, then together with the new immigrants they buy more cheap property, do it up (chop it up and paint it magnolia) with the cheap labour from their families then rent it out to the friends and relations of the second wave.... and so it goes on. They employ each other in their shops, clothing factories and cab firms etc . In fact often ONLY one family out of each clan will be "legitimate" incomers. They work under the radar for low wages and live in uncontrolled housing. Often in fear of the original family.

This means that the LA don't know how many children there are when it comes to schooling them, it means that many children then claim to be resident "cousins" of the original family living at the address of the original family. Many small two bed houses seem to have about 25 people living in them if you look at the records. (They actually can't and don't). It also means that there are far too few school places. Extrapolating backwards there MUST also be far more adults in the borough than are officially resident.

The Somali volunteers at the library have told me horrific stories of their lives, I know they can't stay there... BUT they don't all NEED to be here. There ARE other places between here and Somalia where they could and should have stopped. There are also other places in the country where resources are not so stretched and where they could be settled.

Obviously some people have to live in sub-standard accomodation, they have no choice, and are not part of the "black economy" but they are victims of it and the knock-on effects of our out-of-control legitimate economy.

But to ignore the obvious effects of this undocumented economy is stupid, and to claim it isn't that bad because there are no statistics supporting the argument is entirely missing the point.

And our asylum claims are below the European average, because they just don't bother claiming. They come into the country and disappear. In London it's almost impossible to track someone down if they don't officially exist in the first place. Why would you draw attention to yourself by claimin asylum?

I support RubyGates, that is very much what happens in Southall too. Some people work and get paid in Rupees, the state isn't 'aware' of these people, they are the shadowy figures, who disappear when the council visits or are 'just visiting' for a week or two. The devout muslim single mum who gets pregnant with a fifth child and needs a bigger flat? The father is there somewhere but the reality is you can't see them

The reality is that's it's a complex mix of everything that we've talked about on this thread. No one has been horrible about anyone. I question why people can't bear to have the issue of housing and migration discussed.

And of course all asylum seekers in other countries claim immediately and don't disappear .

The reality is that not enough affordable housing has be built for years and I don't see any political party advocating a large scale building programme.

Asylum seekers are not the key issue if you want to talk about immigration. The complete inefficiency of the uk border agency to deal with overstayers, recognise bogus students etc is a much much bigger problem. Anyone who has ever had the joy of dealing with Lunar House in Croyden will recognise my view on the competance of the UKBA (oh dear we seem to have lost your file again!).

It is silly really. We desperately need a massive home building program like the post WWII one, which would have a double benefit of providing housing for those that need it in places where it is needed. It would also provide jobs and incomes for thousands of workers, thus helping the wider economy and the employment situation.

The real reason they don't want this? Because millions of baby boomers and middle income home owners (and remember most politicians fit in this description) don't want their properties to devalue. If there were enough homes to go round, property values would plummet. This would be massively unpopular for those who "have".

Horsetowater

I still think a good start would be to house new comers elsewhere, there are council houses empty in places like Wales, I think it's far fairer to ask people new in the country to go there, then to ask those born and bread in an area with friends, relatives and maybe work to move miles away and start a new life.

And do we really need a massive home building program? we are endlessly told we ain't got enough houses yet I can walk down the street and see many empty flats above shops because the shop owns it and doesn't rent it out and derelict buildings.

that studio flat I lived in that had 22 flats in the building, across the road from it where two derelict buildings, big Victorian houses exactly the same size as the one I was living in, they are still there falling to bits, must be at least 8 years now, never seen them any other way.

I believe it is said that there are 385,000 empty flats in London above shops that don't use them/don't rent them out.