The hostile environment: what social landlords need to know
The problems experienced by the Windrush generation highlight the effects of the “hostile environment” created by Theresa May when she was home secretary. Anyone needing rented housing is affected, alongside those going to hospital or applying for a job or bank account. Social housing applicants have long had to comply with eligibility rules but landlords […]
Is Britain about anything other than battles?
How old was Mary, Queen of Scots, when she took the throne? Who won the Battle of Killiecrankie? Unless you know the answers, you’re not fit to be a British citizen. Well, of course you may be one already, but for people who take the Home Office’s Life in the UK test in the hope […]
Five myths about migrants and housing
What do you know about migrants and where they live? Here are five things often said about migrants’ housing rights that are untrue or only partially true. Get the facts here. Migrants have a right to social housing New migrants from outside the EU aren’t eligible for social housing except in very limited circumstances (e.g. […]
Brexit means we have to build fewer houses… or does it?
Ahead of the launch of the UK Housing Review, CIH is running a series of blogs trailing its content. In the first of these we look at whether some of the claims made about the likely impact of Brexit on housing demand stack up. It’s a claim already made by some newspapers opposed to building […]
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 […]
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’ […]
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 […]
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 […]
Harsh measures
Landlords are struggling to see the connection between the government’s need to respond to the crisis in Calais and the sudden announcement that it’s going to be made easier to evict ‘illegal’ immigrants from tenancies, and that landlords will face jail sentences if they don’t properly check tenants’ immigration status. As Richard Lambert of the […]
John Perry lives in Masaya, Nicaragua where he works on