Labour's new housing is liable to fill up with asylum seekers
The Government has announced that it will spend £2 billion to build up to 18,000 social and affordable homes – but who will get them? It's part of their plan to build 1.5 million new homes over the course of this Parliament. Many responses to this were sceptical however. It has been suggested that these homes will be used to house asylum seekers.
That is because the Government's Office for Value for Money has concluded that the expensive migrant hotels, which Labour promised to shut down, will need to stay open for several years to come. However, they write in their report, the 1.5 million new homes will help to reduce that.
On the face of it, that might seem sensible. After the election, the Chancellor claimed that £4.6 billion of overspending on migrant hotels was part of a supposed £22 billion black hole. It costs £145 per night to keep an asylum seeker in a hotel, which is partly to blame for spending per asylum seeker soaring from £17,000 in 2020 to £41,000 now.
In contrast, putting them into dispersal accommodation, like houses and flats, costs £14 a night.
However, there were 8,000 more asylum seekers living in hotels at the end of last year than there were at the time of the General Election last July. That has been driven by more asylum seekers appealing their rejected claims, with the initial grant rate for asylum dropping from 75 per cent in 2022 to 47 per cent last year. There has also been an increase in small boat crossings, with more than 5,000 crossing the Channel already this year, a 24 per cent higher rate at this point in the year than last year.
So long as the flow of asylum seekers continues, the migrant hotels will have to stay open. Labour's plan to smash the gangs doesn't seem to be working, leaving the Government scrambling for new ideas, like 'return hubs' in the Balkans. The Italians have already tried this and failed, and, with human rights laws, it seems unlikely it would work for the UK either.
Those who do successfully get asylum often find themselves homeless, with 20,000 in this position by last November. At that point, councils are often required to house them in some of their limited stock of social housing or temporary accommodation.
That means that demand for these new social houses could be overwhelmed just by the number of asylum seekers already here, let alone the mounting numbers coming. In that case, many Nimbys might be justified in opposing new developments, if they will end up primarily benefiting asylum seekers rather than the British people who find themselves unable to get on the property ladder.
There are already calls for the Government to bring in migrant workers to build these homes which, combined with the number of those on skilled worker visas increasingly claiming asylum, creates the absurd possibility of immigrants claiming asylum and ending up living in the very homes they got a visa to build in the first place.
The asylum system is broken. The Government might want to listen to bolder voices in their own party, like Jonathan Brash MP, who has called for them to disapply the ECHR and deport foreign criminals. Only when they can secure our borders and stop the flow of new asylum seekers will it make sense to build more homes. In the meantime, British people will find themselves paying their taxes to build social housing they may never occupy.
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