Landlords needed – T4K September update

Why the list

The project needs expanding. There are appeal rights exhausted asylum seekers living hand to mouth and often ending up on the streets. If you’re in that situation it is much harder for you, then if you have your refugee papers. There are practically no statutory options. T4K will house you, but we need to find about £800 a month (and a landlord) to do it. Do tell your friends about us.

There are more than 200 asylum seekers living in terrible Home Office accommodation. The bulk of that cohort are stuck in hotels. Single people may well soon be forced to share rooms with strangers. This is not a rational response to a football stadium’s worth of people claiming asylum each year. It is not even a rational response to the Home Office’s incompetence at processing asylum claims. The reason that there are people in hotels is because the Home Office’s hostility to migration means that they cannot handle what is, in administrative terms, a small number of people. The rational response is to let people work, let people access mainstream welfare rights and to have a system that looks for reasons to accept an asylum claim rather than one which leaves no stone unturned in a quest to reject it. Home Office policy only makes sense when you understand that it is an attempt to punish people for claiming asylum. In response, my fantasy is that we find rooms or hosts for each and every person in those hotels. If you can take on a long-term placement, do sign up with Room for Refugees.

Another person that you are supporting is a young woman with serious health problems. She is in need of asylum and, in the ordinary course of things, would have gone into asylum support accommodation. Her health problems are so severe that any such a move would be fatal. The Home Office don’t care about that. Your support is literally keeping her alive. This time the council have agreed that they have a duty to her and will fund accommodation, but there isn’t anything suitable. We have been desperately trying to find an accessible one-bedroom flat. The money is there, but the hostile environment puts landlords off taking a risk on anything involving, shall we say unusual, immigration status. It does not matter that this sort of arrangement is not prohibited by the Right to Rent rules, nor that such behaviour by landlords and estate agents is probably unlawful discrimination. We cannot find a flat.

As well as our young woman, there are a retired couple who finally had to abandon their home when things got too dangerous for them. They are in the unusual position of being able to afford to rent somewhere for themselves. They also can’t find anywhere to rent.

I want away for about three weeks in August. I had not switched off my phone, which was perhaps something of a mistake. I got a message out of the blue from another newly minted refugee facing homelessness in Brighton. I put him in touch with our care and support lead, Sue. Thanks to your support and money, let’s face it is about the money and here is our donate page, he has not been on the street. He was put up in a hostel whilst Sue scrambled to sort out a Refugees at Home placement. He is still looking for a longer term accommodation solution. It’s really hard to find landlords willing to take a risk on refugees.

This situation is becoming more and more common. The Home Office are beginning to clear their backlog by making positive decisions. They also now only give you a week’s notice after a positive decision before they evict you from asylum support. The council, except in extreme cases, will not provide emergency accommodation. Voices in Exile, Care for Calais, Refugee Radio, the Brighton Quakers and ourselves have been desperately trying to find solutions for a whole cohort of young women who found themselves facing street homelessness after they received their refugee papers. We need people with rooms and homes to rent and we need willing hosts for short term placements. If you can help with the latter, do sign up with Refugees at Home.

Love

Just today I was speaking to a young woman who has been through every kind of torment. She is struggling. She expressed her sorrow in these words: “you come looking for protection, but you never know what is their [the Home Office’s] decision”. A year into her asylum claim, she sees the Home Office as nothing more than an incomprehensible threat. She is absolutely right and it shows that the state will not give her what she is looking for, what she needs and what she deserves.

For me, and I think for t4k, there is only one solution. The community needs to step in. We do that through extending the bonds of friendship. Come along to the Jollof Café evening on 22^nd September. We do that by providing practical support. That might mean accompanying people to appointments, helping people fill in forms, finding cricket games for them and so on. It might mean bigger things like opening your home to a guest or even offering it for rent. Fundamentally though, we do it by putting up small amounts of money every month so that out of our small change we can provide the protection that each and every human being in our community should have as her right. You might not be able to know the Home Office’s decision, but you can be sure to know Brighton’s. We will welcome you hand on heart.

A thousand thanks,

Jacob and all of us at T4K