Is immigration causing an housing crisis?

 

In parts of Greater Manchester like Tameside, Serco are offering landlords in the private sector up to three times the going rental market rate, to offer housing to asylum seekers, on five-year contracts. Serco recently acquired seven properties on Fairfield Road, Droylsden, which they turned into Houses of Multiple Occupation (HMOs), to house asylum seekers. For many private landlords and Serco, it is more financially lucrative these days to house asylum seekers than local indigenous people.

The housing crisis in Britain has more to do with government policy than with illegal immigrants. It comes down to the mismatch between supply and demand. Immigrants are a handy card to play when politicians are trying to deflect attention from their own failings. In the last 20 years the population of the UK has risen by 9 million, largely due to immigration and housing supply has not kept up. Margaret Thatcher virtually put an end to councils building new housing in the 1980s. She believed that the private sector would step in to fill the gap, but that didn't happen. The number of houses built by councils slumped from 100,000 a year to almost nothing. Her Right to Buy scheme took a lot of council housing out of the system.

The housing charity Shelter, say the number of new social rent homes built annually has fallen by 64% the past 15 years. In 20% of council areas in England, not one social home has been built in the last 20 years. More than 1.3 million households in Britain are waiting for social housing. British house builders operate like cartels by hoarding land (ransom plots/land banks) and by constricting the supply of housing, to drive up housing prices and profits. Housebuilding in Britain has become a lucrative cash cow for builders. Rents in the private sector are astronomical and house prices have rocketed.