How can housing organisations respond to Louise Casey’s review into integration?
As Dame Louise Casey’s independent review into opportunity and integration reveals the challenges facing the UK CIH’s senior policy advisor John Perry asks how housing organisations can contribute. Louise Casey asks some uncomfortable questions about Britain’s failure to integrate newcomers to the country. She’s not the first to have done so, but has produced the latest […]
Tackling discrimination in housing
Given the increase in race-related hate crime before and since June’s referendum, housing organisations need to be even more alert to possible discrimination in housing than they were before. CIH has already warned about the likely effects in the private rented sector of the new ‘right to rent’ document checks that began in England in […]
What does Brexit mean for migration and housing demand?
The short answer to this question is we don’t yet know and it will be a while before we do. The longer one is that it depends very much on the kind of ‘Brexit’ we eventually adopt… Migration accounts for a bit more than a third of expected future household growth in England. And ‘net’ […]
Northern Ireland’s distinct housing market
CIH has just published a brand new edition of the book Housing in Northern Ireland, edited by Peter Shanks and David Mullins. Here CIH policy adviser John Perry, one of the authors, gives a flavour of what the new book offers. Less than ten years ago there was a house-building boom in Northern Ireland. Completions […]
The refugee crisis brought to life
Patrick Kingsley is the Guardian’s migration correspondent, who as well as telling the story of recent migration to Europe in the newspaper has now produced an enthralling book, The New Odyssey, which is also bang up to date. Anyone who wants to know why people leave Syria, or Eritrea, or risk the crossing of the […]
Scope for error
Immigration checks for new tenancies start today (February 1) but they don’t affect social landlords, do they? Actually, they do – because although many tenancies are exempt, all landlords need to be aware of those that aren’t – and of the repercussions of the checks applying across the private sector. From February any new tenant […]
Overland from Cuba to Texas
Thawing relations between the United States and Cuba have brought an upsurge in Cubans trying to leave the island. They’re worried that they may lose their favourable US immigration status, becoming no more welcome than any other Latino who fancies life in the US. Since 1995, the ‘wet foot, dry foot’ policy has deterred people […]
Housing associations can help keep refugees off the streets
Up to 90% of Syrian and other asylum seekers who make it to Britain face homelessness. Social landlords can offer advice, support – and homes. When the plight of Syrian refugees made September’s headlines, housing organisations rushed to offer rehousing across Britain. But can they contribute to the government’s resettlement scheme and, if not, how […]
Syrian refugees – how can we help?
Up to 20,000 refugees will be resettled in Britain from Syria. How can social landlords engage with this and other schemes to help those on their way or already here? What is the scale of the crisis? Around half of Syria’s 23 million people have been displaced by civil war since 2011. Most are still […]
Immigration checks – a plea for caution
The Home Office is pushing ahead with the roll-out of immigration checks by private landlords, but has still not published its evaluation of the first phase of the scheme. In the meantime, an independent assessment confirms many of the worries that the Chartered Institute of Housing and others had when the idea was first put […]
John Perry lives in Masaya, Nicaragua where he works on