Myths about migrants and social housing must be challenged, says John Perry.
The myth that social housing is going to migrants is an old one. I recall CIH preparing a report for the Local Government Association, back in 2008, showing that new housing wasn’t going to European migrants. Roll forward 17 years and Trivallis recently had to respond to false allegations on Facebook that its new homes are housing ‘illegal immigrants’. Across at Bridgend, the council answered unfounded charges that asylum seekers were being housed there ‘in huge numbers’.
The more politicians and the media discuss migration, the more myths are created. The recent false allegations in Wales feature one of the most stubborn myths: that somehow migrants are ‘jumping the housing queue’. The Sun newspaper said precisely this last winter when the government announced it was emptying the Bibby Stockholm, the barge used to house asylum seekers in Dorset.
The truth, of course, is that asylum seekers are ineligible for social housing. Those who would otherwise be destitute get very basic accommodation paid for by the Home Office, whether this is sharing a hotel room or living in a former army barracks, and surviving on only £9.95 a week, or being housed in an often poor quality HMO in the private sector and receiving the slightly more generous £49.18 weekly, from which they have to buy all their food, clothing and other necessities.
Widen the question to all recent migrants and the answer is similar: the vast majority of new people coming to live in the UK, often temporarily on worker visas or as students, have ‘no recourse to public funds’. This means that they have no access to social housing or to most benefits. They can rent in the private sector but have to pay their own way. There are very few exceptions to this rule or ways to get it rescinded, one being for victims of domestic abuse. At any one time, it means that around four million people living in the UK have very limited protection under the welfare state.
MOVE-ON PERIOD
Of course, longer term, people accepted as refugees lose their asylum accommodation and may need housing or become homeless – an outcome that may be more likely now that the move-on period has been cut back (for most refugees) from 56 to 28 days – but a large proportion are single people and are unlikely to get even temporary accommodation, unless they can show they are vulnerable. Homelessness among new refugees has been increasing, but it still only accounts for 8.8 per cent of cases in England. Similar figures are not available for Wales but The Homelessness Monitor: Wales 2025 shows concern among providers for the numbers leaving asylum accommodation.
Longstanding migrants to the UK can eventually receive ‘indefinite leave to remain’ and then have the same status as UK nationals in terms of housing and benefits. But even if they become eligible for a social home, they often have far less chance of getting one than a UK national does, because of local assessment criteria. That’s why Census data show that in 2021 just seven per cent of people living in social housing in England and Wales had a non-UK passport.
A BLATANT LIE
Back at Westminster, the shadow home secretary, Chris Philp MP, claims that: ‘One in ten new homes under Labour are going to asylum seekers – when millions of hard-working young people struggle to get their own place.’ The true picture is that approaching ten per cent of social housing allocations in England go to non-UK nationals (figures are not available for Wales). Inevitably, all or most of these will have spent years in the UK before qualifying, even if some were originally asylum seekers. Even fewer will go into ‘new homes’ as most are relets. So saying that one in ten new homes go to asylum seekers is a blatant lie.
We can answer these lies with the facts, but those of us working in social housing must also emphasise that the housing crisis is due to a lack of new affordable homes being built and a lack of investment in housing over many years. It can’t be blamed on immigration. The gap between housing supply and demand is so big that even if migration stopped completely, new house building would still fall well short of what’s required.
Cutting migration won’t solve the housing crisis, and by damaging the economy and depriving it of key workers, it might make it worse.
John Perry is a policy advisor for the Chartered Institute of Housing. You can find the details of migrants’ entitlement to housing and benefits on the CIH’s housing rights website. You can also sign up for our quarterly newsletters.