Sue Lukes highlights a crucial consultation on the Government’s appalling housing allocation proposals.

We’ve seen this process so many times. Media ‘stories’ based on massaged statistics and facts appear, then the Government proposes to ‘fix the problem’ and thus get pre-election headlines designed to appeal to the ever shrinking racist vote.  So now it is the turn of housing. 

At the end of January, local authorities were sent a consultation document about proposals to change the way housing is allocated via the local council waiting list or register in England. Housing is a devolved matter so rules in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are different and set by their respective governments. The deadline for responses is 26^th March.

Housing allocation is the process by which people go onto council waiting lists, and may then be able to get a tenancy from the council or from housing associations and other providers who have agreed either to run a joint waiting list or accept nominations from the council to fill their vacancies. In many areas, most general social housing is only accessed via the joint waiting list, so being ineligible for allocation means that you can only rent from the private rented sector.

Current rules on eligibility are made by regulations that are complicated and exclude most migrants who are not allowed “recourse to public funds”.  But British and Irish citizens, EU citizens and their family members, people with indefinite leave to remain, refugees, people on the Ukraine schemes and others allowed to access public funds can go on the lists and may get emergency housing if homeless and in priority need because the household includes a child, pregnant or vulnerable person.  Otherwise, councils can set their own rules, and some exclude people who have not lived in the area long enough (but must make exceptions, for example, for people fleeing domestic abuse)

The Government wants to introduce:

• A “UK connection test” so that only UK and Irish citizens, people covered by the EU Withdrawal Agreement and those who have lived in the UIK for at least ten years can go on the waiting list.
• A “local connection test” for all council waiting lists.  Currently councils can decide to set their own rules about this, so if they want to attract people to work in new industries, or to move to unpopular areas, they can decide to reduce or remove conditions about how long people have lived in the area. Currently, over 10% of local housing authorities have no residence or local connection test.  These proposals would remove councils’ rights to set their own policies in line with their own priorities. 
• Other tests about income, making false statements, anti-social behaviour and terrorism will exclude more people from the waiting lists.  Again, this is more central government control of councils, and introduces further elements of racism.

Who would this exclude?Lots of people currently eligible for allocation including:

• People with Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) who have not lived in the UK for ten years. Many people get ILR after five years, for example the spouses of British citizens, people who have been on a work permit and refugees. 
• People with leave to remain with recourse to public funds who have lived in the UK for less than ten years. This might include victims of modern slavery, parents of British children, refugees, people from Hong Kong, people from Ukraine, stateless people, people fleeing domestic abuse.
• Many people affected by the Windrush scandal who got leave to remain because they had been unjustly refused it but have not had it for ten years and may not have other proofs of residence – and potentially their children too.

These proposals are politically motivated and will not address the real issues.  These changes have not been asked for by local authorities or housing organisations. Quite the contrary, most major housing organisations responded to initial media speculation on the proposals with a strongly worded joint open letter to the housing minister:

“We all deserve safe housing, regardless of where we are from. Further rationing of an already scarce resource does not address the fundamental failures of the last 40 years – we have simply not built the homes the UK needs to ensure everybody has a safe and secure place to live. At the same time, we’ve seen net losses of social rented homes grow – exceeding 200,000 since 2011 – mainly due to right to buy. Social housing is designed to support those in the greatest need. Government data shows that 90 per cent of new social housing lettings go to UK nationals, with long waiting lists in all areas. Imposing extended qualification periods before people can even get on the housing register is likely to force more people into homelessness. If the government’s main concern is to increase the availability of social lettings, it could achieve this far more effectively by building more social housing.”

This consultation is simply pre-election political grandstanding, rather than a response to any need. It is one that will not only inflame community tensions, but also create problems for housing providers. It will increase discrimination, empower unscrupulous and criminal private landlords (because tenants cannot escape into social housing), tie councils’ hands and put pressure on other services:  homeless people in emergency accommodation will be prevented from moving on into social housing, social services may have to house some families, and the negative effects of poor and expensive private rented housing on health and educational attainment are well documented. 

The consultation ends on 26^th March 2024. Local housing authorities will be working on their responses now, so it is important that they reject these proposals.  Local councillors should be checking what officers are doing and make sure that all responses are in line with commitments to equalities and human rights. 

The consultation document welcomes “views from housing associations, tenants of social housing and those on a local housing authority waiting list” so this is an opportunity for renters unions, tenants associations, migrant and homeless organisations to tell the government what they think about their abject failure to provide decent social housing for all and instead blame migrants for the shortages they and their profiteering landlord allies have created. 

Sue Lukes was an Islington Labour Councillor from 2018 to 2022 and is a writer and consultant on migration issues.

Image: Migrants welcome here GJN banner. Author: Global Justice Now, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.