We have to face the challenge of housing asylum seekers and refugees if we’re to confront racist attacks

John Perry of the Chartered Institute of Housing runs its housing rights website. Here he brings BME National members up to date on some of the key issues facing asylum seekers and refugees and how CIH resources can help you to tackle them.

Managing the CIH’s website on housing rights for migrants means we are continually aware of the severe housing problems faced by asylum seekers and refugees, and the difficulties they have in being integrated in communities. We’re also conscious of how these issues are exploited by those who hate migrants and want to foment racism. Rather than putting asylum seekers in tents, as one Reform politician suggested, the need is to regularise migrants’ housing status as quickly as possible and integrate them into communities.

Keeping them apart makes them an easier target for racists.

That’s why CIH has been helping to promote the solution developed by Kate Wareing of Soha housing, that would see the Home Office and MHCLG collaborating to provide the money for councils to buy properties to provide supported accommodation for asylum seekers, a solution which could then meet wider temporary accommodation needs. The payback in savings to both the government and to local authorities would come within months. It would facilitate a concerted effort to end the use of hotels and stop asylum seekers being such an easy target for right-wing attacks.

In the meantime, the government is attempting to cut accommodation costs by moving people out of hotels but often in ways that can be very disruptive to their lives. The housing rights website has a guide for advisers on how to help asylum seekers who are being told to move and are likely yo be very concerned about where they will sent.

Refugee Week (June 16-22) reminds us of the importance of helping refugees who leave asylum support accommodation, need secure housing and – we hope – begin to integrate in communities where they may settle in the long term. At the moment, new refugees still have the longer, 56-day ‘move-on’ period to leave supported accommodation, introduced at the end of last year after campaigning by CIH and others.

On the CIH website, the pages on assisting refugees give guidance on how they can be helped to avoid homelessness. In the Spring housing rights newsletter, Sue Lukes gives advice on how new refugees can establish a ‘local connection’ with an area when seeking help from the housing authority. Anna Yassin from the homeless charity Glass Door, writes about refugee homelessness and how her project is tackling it. And we have two more articles on helping refugee families to thrive.

Many BME housing associations are doing a great job in helping to integrate refugees and other migrants. In our housing rights newsletters, we have featured this work. For example, in the Summer 2024 edition it was reported on a forum organised by Arhag and NACCOM (the ‘no accommodation’ charity), which also involved Innisfree, Metropolitan Thames Valley and Glass Door, to look at practical ideas for reducing migrant homelessness. One of them, MTVH’s Refuge Rent Deposit Project, will be the subject of a newsletter article later this year.

MTVH are the main sponsors of the CIH housing rights website and they do this for a reason – it’s a key resource for social landlords and advisers who need to get to grips with the ever-complex rules around which categories of migrant are eligible for housing and benefits, and how to assist those who fall through the net and risk becoming destitute.

We invite all members of BME National to ensure that their staff have access to the website and use it to help find housing solutions for migrants. And we also invite submissions to their newsletter of examples of good practice that might be followed by others, especially if the examples come from BME associations.

If you would like to contribute or have comments on the website, do please get in touch by email to: policyandpractice@cih.org