The issues around social housing, how it is allocated and who is living in it, have been widely debated in recent weeks. The themes are familiar, as they are often repeated, but the facts revealed in our research show a different picture.
Our report found that social housing communities are mostly UK-born as only one in ten residents was born abroad. It also found that the current rules for who gets to live in these homes are being applied correctly. There are communities with higher numbers of migrants than in other places in Britain, but on the whole the proportion of UK-born and foreign-born living in social housing is similar at around one in six people.
People feel strongly about who gets social housing and this came across clearly in the focus groups we held to hear what people think about it. But these powerful perceptions seem to have no foundation, as the evidence in our report indicates. It found no basis for claims that new migrants get priority over UK born residents or evidence of abuse of the system such as ‘queue jumping’ or providing false information. Misconceptions about the availability of social housing and who gets to the top of the waiting list fastest may be distorting people’s views.
Much of the public concern about the impact of migration on social housing has, at its heart, the failure of social housing supply to meet the demands of the population. The poorer the area, the longer the waiting lists, therefore the greater the tension. Pressure on social housing comes from the reduction in the social housing stock as existing tenants exercise their right to buy and fewer new builds over the last few decade, being set against an increase in the number of households in the UK, caused by greater life-expectancy, marital breakdown, and to a much lesser extent immigration.
Priority groups identified in the Housing Act can move up the waiting list more quickly. These groups – frail older people, disabled people, families with young children, to name a few – do not include new migrants as they are not entitled to social housing. They have to wait up to five years for the right to stay in the UK long-term, and only then can they apply for social housing. How these criteria works in practice is not widely understood, which may perpetuate the belief that the system itself is unfair.
The Commission will continue to have a keen interest in both the criteria for social housing and how those rules are applied, including the government’s proposal to change the priority for social housing. Government and social housing providers need to work with the communities they serve to foster understanding about what is really happening on the ground.
A copy of the report ‘Social housing allocation and immigrant communities’ can be downloaded from the Commission’s website.