"Immigrants are not to blame for the housing crisis"

Check out this excellent article by Peter Apps (former Inside Housing magazine). Powerful factual arguments that is a million miles away from far right fake news. 

"As the far right march through the streets of Britain, it is worth reminding ourselves that one of their favourite arguments is a fiction

It has been a scary week in Britain with news websites filling up with images of burned cars, smashed shop windows and angry young men in hoodies in running battles with riot police.

Like most people in the country, the scenes have surprised me. Yes, I could have told you there was a bubbling anger and an increasingly vocal, increasingly scary far right making its presence felt online and off.

But I did not think we were as close as we were to real-life violence on our streets and it does not leave me feeling particularly good about where we are going to go in the coming years, especially if someone like Robert Jenrick (an increasingly expert practitioner of dog-whistle politics) gets to become leader of the opposition.

As has been the case whenever the far right has raised its ugly head out of the miserable pubs, gentlemen’s clubs, golf courses and Reddit threads where it usually lurks, housing is a place it wants to turn the conversation.... Subscribe to Peter’s Substack

Pete is trying to make his journalism pay, so if interested in finding out the truth about immigration and the housing crisis then please subscribe.  It starts from £3.50 per month. But you can read the full article here Immigrants are not to blame for the housing crisis (substack.com)

There is no real link with immigration and rising housing prices. 90% of new social tenancies go to UK citizens not recent immigrants. 81% to white families (in line with the general population).  

Immigrants are amongst the victims of the housing scandal not the cause. That lies fairly and squarely with the previous government's housing policy. 

"East End promise: an interview with Newham mayor Rokhsana Fiaz"

(hat tip "Inside Housing") Newham’s new mayor has a tough job on her hands to tackle some of the country’s worst housing deprivation. Peter Apps finds out how she plans to do it. Photography by Peter Searle

"Newham’s new mayor has a tough job on her hands to tackle some of the country’s worst housing deprivation. By several measures, the east London borough of Newham has the worst housing crisis in the UK. It has the largest gap in the country between the social housing that becomes available each year (588 homes) and the number of families waiting for it (25,729).

One in 25 people in the borough are homeless, the highest proportion in the country. Since last May, for the first time in 23 years, someone different has had the responsibility for turning the borough’s housing situation around. Newham’s new mayor is Rokhsana Fiaz, a first-generation daughter of Pakistani parents and a lifelong East Ender. Ms Fiaz is far from the archetype of an aloof, out-of-touch political leader. Her answer? To build thousands of council-owned homes for social rent.

This is something for which campaigners and commentators have been calling for years – but others have warned that it is impossible to do so in the current funding climate. Ms Fiaz is undeterred. “This administration is about pursuing what was thought of as impossible and making it possible,” she declares. While recent history is against her (in 2017/18, just 16 homes for social rent were built in Newham and just 157 have been added to the borough’s stock in the past three years), Ms Fiaz believes the policy climate is turning. “We are beginning to tear up the orthodoxy book that has very much framed the approach to housebuilding and housing delivery for the past couple of decades because it is just simply not sustainable. If you don’t want to be part of this new story about housebuilding in this country where councils are in the driving seat, that’s fine – you can go elsewhere because I’m only interested in working with developers and partners who want to be on the right side of history.”

Ms Fiaz is trying to make history in Newham. And if she succeeds in getting a generation of its children out of temporary accommodation and into their own homes, then history is exactly what she will make.

See full story here (paywall) https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/insight/east-end-promise-an-interview-with-newham-mayor-rokhsana-fiaz-59919

Be Really Shocked about Homelessness in Newham

"A fairly shocking housing stat I've come across as background to a feature: There are 7,515 children in temporary accommodation within the 36km² which makes up Newham, east London. 

This compares to 4,920 across the 40,000km² which makes up the entire north of England.

The three northern England regions - the North West, North East and Yorkshire and the Humber. The population of these regions is c.15m compared to 330,000 in Newham"

hat tip Inside Housing news editor Peter Apps