From The BBC:
There is no evidence that new arrivals in the UK are able to jump council housing queues, an Equality and Human Rights Commission report says.
I duly followed the links all the way to the 68 page report (pdf). Apart from rehashing the same old stats that suggest that one-in-ten units of social housing are given to "recent arrivals" (primarily successful asylum seekers), I find this fine summary on pages 25 to 26 (reproduced below).
Doesn't this all exactly confirm what we suspected? Agreed, the BNP has vastly exaggerated this, but they are no more guilty of distorting the statistics than the EHRC.
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"Only four country-of-birth groups have higher proportions of persons living in social housing than the UK-born population. These are the Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Jamaica and Somalia-born populations. Over 95 per cent of the Somalia born population lives in rental accommodation and of this group, nearly 80 per cent are in social housing. However, these groups are numerically small in relation to the total of social tenants in the UK.
The overall size of the Somalia-born population is small - an estimated 92,200 persons in Quarter Three of 2007, of which 72,800 were social tenants, compared with 8.4 million UK-born social tenants. An LFS analysis estimates that 73 per cent Afghanistan-born persons were social tenants, amounting to just 19,200 people.
A number of factors account for the over-representation as social tenants of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Jamaica and Somalia-born populations. These include:
• Lower household income, thus an inability to purchase property (for Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Somalia-born populations).
• Larger family size, with many families being unable to afford suitable properties (for Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Somalia-born populations).
• A preference for settlement in London, where property prices are higher and greater proportions of all country-of-birth groups are social tenants (for all four groups and UK-born populations).
• High proportions of new arrivals among the population, with new arrivals least likely to have accumulated the savings needed to purchase property (for Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Somalia-born populations).
Thus for each foreign-born group, a number of factors cause particular patterns of housing tenure. Three examples are given below.
• The India-born population has a low uptake of social housing. It is predominantly a long-settled community in the UK, whose average income is higher than the UK mean. Newer arrivals are largely highly-skilled work visa holders or students who have no entitlement to social housing. The factors that account for a low uptake of social housing are high-income levels and immigration status.
• The Polish-born population has a low uptake of social housing. Most of the community has migrated since 2002 and its average income is lower than the UK mean. Poland-born migrants are largely childless and many Poles aspire to return home. Some Poles are also living in tied accommodation. The factors that account for a low uptake of social housing comprise alternative forms of accommodation and family characteristics; as most Polish migrants have no children they would not be prioritised for social housing.
• The Somalia-born population has a high uptake of social housing. Most Somalia-born persons living in the UK have secured refugee status, settled status or UK or EEA citizenship thus qualifying them for social housing. Many Somalis migrated as family groups with their children and family size is much larger than the UK mean. The Somaliaborn population includes many people who are economically inactive or unemployed. Those in work have an average income much lower than the UK mean. The factors that account for a high uptake of social housing comprise low household incomes, large family size and immigration status."
A grim document
6 hours ago
8 comments:
On Today the BBC covered this issue in its usual unbiased way. The item started out with 30 seconds of comment over a bad phone line from a BNP local councillor. This was followed by a one minute response from a Labour councillor on the same council (Dagenham?) saying, in effect, that "it's all very complicated".
Then we got to the meat of the item and were subjected to an interminable non-discussion in the studio with the "director of policy" of the EHRC (whose report was completely unchallenged in any way) and Housing Minister John Healey. No bias there then (although Healey was stumped by Humphrys' question as to why, if there's no problem, Brown is leading a British Housing for Britons campaign.) There was no analysis - such as yours - which could have noted a possiblity that the report's underlying figures and/or its conclusions (considering its source) might be subject to a smidgin of doubt. No - as everyone in the studio agreed - there's no "problem" it's all a matter of "perception". Or rather, revealing the bien pensant not so hidden agenda, the "problem" is lack of "social housing": no mention (of course) that without those immigrants maybe there wouldn't be a "shortage" of housing or pressure on the housing stock in the first place.
I don't think the BNP will lose many votes due to this crapola although the credibility of the BBC as an intelligent unbiased source of news and comment took another kicking. I now look forward to being informed through the auspices of the BBC that another (just as convincing) EHRC report has "proved" that Somali contribution to violent crime in London is the same (or probably less) than those horribly violent indigenous whites in Muswell Hill.
Surely this report misses the point entirely? The issue is not historic granting of council housing (many of the UK council house population will have been there many years if not decades), but the more recent policies? I would be interested to see the breakdown of who was housed for the first time in social housing each year. I suspect that would show that a large proportion of housing made available each year in recent years went to immigrants. But unless they do the research we'll never know.....
Those are interesting stats, particularly on the Poles. I'd like to know how they qualify in the first place, e.g. the Somalians.
A report into immigration from the Equalities quango. Hmmmm - how very independent. Not the least bit suspicious.
good post Mark , I am glad there are people like you around who can digest these reports and actually produce the correct answers, rather than the cherry picking of the reports authors.
@ Sobers, if you crunch the numbers, they suggest that about 80,000 'recent arrival' households get social housing every year (which ties in nicely with the numbers above), about ten per cent of the total that comes up for allocation
@MW: Thanks for the figures. I'm not quite sure about one thing tho - is the 80,000 figure for 'new arrivals' who get social housing per year (as you suggest in your comment above) or is it over the last 5 years (as you suggest in the post linked to above)?
Because there's a big difference between 80K out of 160K or 80K out of 5 x 160K.
S, I reckon 80k households over five years out of 800k allocations over five years = 10%.
(No way is it 80k households per year out of 160k allocations per year, nobody in his right mind would claim that.)
Whatever the margin of error is, it sure as heck is more than the 2% or 3% of 'recent arrivals' in the population in general.
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