More FakeStatistics Tomfoolery

Via a post at John Page's, I read this article at "Inside Housing", which contains the following bald claim:

The debate about immigration and housing is as much about perceptions as facts. And so, depending on your point of view, it’s obvious that immigrants are jumping the queue even if the facts demonstrate that it’s a myth that they are...

I then clicked the word 'myth' to an article only relates to housing managed by housing associations, which is less than half of all 'social housing' (the upmarket bit, the downmarket bit is managed by local authorities), so those figures are irrelevant. Moving on:

The study for the Local Government Association and Equality and Human Rights Commission last year that showed that only 2% of people in social housing were born outside the UK and also identified that the vast majority of new migrants go into the bottom end of the private rented sector*.

As it happens, that's a misquote as well, the first bullet point in the LGA press release says:

New migrants to the UK over the last five years make up around three per cent** of the total UK population but are less than two per cent of the total of those in social housing.

OK. Let's crunch some round numbers:
4 million units of social housing in the UK (local authority or housing association).
Average length of tenancy 25 years.
Hence units to be allocated each year = 160,000.
Number of households on waiting lists 1.6 million, so average time on waiting list almost certainly more than five years.
On that basis, there'd be next to no 'recent arrivals' in social housing, because 'recent arrivals' are people who've been here less than five years, natch.

Alternatively:
4 million units x 2% occupied by 'recent arrivals' = 80,000
Units allocated in last five years = 5 x 160,000 (from above) = 800,000
On that basis, ten per cent of available social housing has been given to 'recent arrivals'.

Now, the first article they linked to said that slightly less than five per cent of housing managed by housing associations was allocated to 'recent arrivals', so if ten per cent of all social housing has gone to 'recent arrivals', the proportion for housing managed by local authorities must be rather higher than ten per cent, somewhere in the region of twelve or thirteen per cent.

So while the underlying statistics may be authentic, they actually show the opposite of what The Righteous say that they show.

* 'go into the bottom end of the private rented sector'? Or should we say 'are claiming Housing Benefit'?

** 'Around three per cent'? Or should we say 'Around 1.8 million'?