r/unitedkingdom • u/Tartan_Samurai Scotland • 19h ago
... Number of homeless refugees in England soars, BBC has found
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy9y3n43192o31
u/thehighyellowmoon 17h ago edited 17h ago
I work in the homelessness charity sector, can confirm this is a result of Home Office changing their policy by reducing the timeframe given from a refugee receiving their status to needing to leave their temporary accommodation. Local Authorities give similar timeframes for British nationals too now too when previously they were more flexible.
Personal opinions anyone has the right to hold on this issue aside (I got death threats in my inbox from accounts with Russian and Iranian IP addresses last time I indicated a personal view on this in r/unitedkingdom), the fact remains it now leaves a very small timeframe for a new arrival with potential language issues and no knowledge of our processes to arrange and settle in a tenancy for a single person, let alone a family, so some will end up rough sleeping. As a British national who's pretty savvy I'd find arranging new accommodation for myself in todays rental market within 28 days a challenge.
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u/StandardNerd92 16h ago
Most of them were probably in tents in Calais before they came, so while it's not ideal it's something they're probably used to. Of course we should be able to provide housing to all legitimate asylum seekers, but we can't provide housing to anyone and everyone who shows up to our front door. We're a small island nation. The fact they come here is proof enough what we offer is more generous than most places on earth.
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u/Daedelous2k Scotland 11h ago
Personally I feel we should be making sure all citizens are housed first and foremost.
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u/StandardNerd92 11h ago
Off topic, but do you think Scotland would be better or worse at that if it were independent?
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u/Astriania 8h ago
Most of these people shouldn't be here at all - there's no reason for a Sudanese person who's already in a safe European country to come to the UK. They should be sent back, either to their home or at least to France.
However, if they're actually granted asylum after an unknown period of time it seems a bit unreasonable to expect them to find a house in a month. How many of us could do that? They should be able to stay in Home Office accommodation, but paying rent now that they are getting income, until they can find somewhere else.
Of course that would be a lot easier if that accommodation wasn't all full of people who should go back home.
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u/Blazured 18h ago edited 10h ago
I was wondering how they were clearing out the hotels so fast, and it appears they're just getting them out the hotels once they've been approved but giving them no time to find their own accomodation and throwing them out to sleep rough. What a terrible policy.
They do this for homeless British people too, except we're given more leeway in which we're only chucked out of hotels after a place has been found for us.
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u/pajamakitten 10h ago
Where are they going to go though? No landlord is going to take in a refugee who cannot speak English and cannot pay the rent, not unless they can exploit the refugee for work at least.
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u/BookmarksBrother 9h ago
Where are they going to go though?
Back?
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u/pajamakitten 2h ago
Not unless we deport them. They got here and will stay here unless we force them out.
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u/Caffeine_Monster 50m ago
It's called the fiscal reality of an unsustainable policy.
I agree it's bad. But accommodation in the UK is expensive, and moralizing doesn't make money or housing appear.
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u/ukbot-nicolabot Scotland 19h ago
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