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Leyla Williams is deputy director of West London Welcome
The government is working to clear the asylum backlog, but leaves it to frontline charities to stop those refugees becoming homeless
Our team is working tirelessly to support refugees facing homelessness in our community, but government policy and lack of resources is making a hard job worse, writes Leyla Williams
Since we first opened our West London Welcome refugee community centre in Hammersmith back in 2018, every two or three months, one of our community members would turn up at our door, smiling from ear to ear, and tell us that they had finally received refugee status.
Word would spread and that person would get lots of hugs, maybe receive cards from friends. However, it was always a quiet celebration because, like that individual, most people at our centre wait two years or more for a decision on their asylum applications and live in near destitution on £9.10 a week from the Home Office while they wait.
It can be bittersweet for people to hear a friend’s good news while still waiting for their own. Our caseworkers would then work with that person newly with refugee status to support them to work out what to do next, taking the time to explore housing options with them.
But in late August, everything changed. The government announced earlier this year that it was going to clear the backlog of unprocessed asylum decisions by the end of this year, and it is currently trying to fulfil that pledge. In west London, we have some of the highest concentrations of asylum hotels in the UK, meaning that hundreds of people living in asylum accommodation in west London are suddenly being granted refugee status.
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The sheer number of people being granted refugee status across the UK – projected by the Red Cross to be 50,000 people by the end of the year – means that councils and small frontline non-governmental organisations (NGOs) like us are overwhelmed with requests for housing support. We are now seeing around five new positive asylum decisions a week at our centre alone.
Our community members and our advice team are facing the biggest casework crisis we have ever had at our centre – the new refugee homelessness crisis.
Refugees rarely have the connections or money to organise a room for themselves after being suddenly evicted from their asylum accommodation. With no savings since they are banned from working or claiming benefits while seeking asylum, they are then given just 28 days’ notice to leave their asylum accommodation and find themselves a job or benefits to pay the rent and find somewhere else to live.
“The fact that these people face destitution as soon as they are given the right to build a life in the UK is an appalling reality for them to be confronted with”
To make matters even more difficult, people have been facing even shorter eviction notice periods, with some being given just seven days to move out. Most landlords don’t want to rent to people living on housing benefit, making it incredibly difficult for people to find rooms in the private rented sector. It is no surprise that the country is seeing a chaotic crisis of new refugees pitching tents outside their asylum hotels, because they have nowhere else to go.
Our indefatigable advice team is working 24/7 to ensure people are housed through a range of solutions, from arranging councils to house them to finding them rooms in YMCAs or hosts or landlords within our community willing to help. We work closely with our friends at Refugees at Home to get people hosted when we need to.
Of course, we also provide lots of emotional support along the way.
Against the odds and through sheer hard work, we have managed to ensure all of the 45 people within our community recently granted refugee status have avoided homelessness and been safely housed.
As well as one-to-one casework support to prepare people for ‘life after refugee status’, we have been running group workshops in various languages on how to navigate their new world of housing, benefits and work, and ensure they understand their rights and entitlements while beginning their new lives here. We have also created translated guides on how to navigate housing and benefits for our community and those outside our doors getting refugee status.
“Our community members and our advice team are facing the biggest casework crisis we have ever had at our centre – the new refugee homelessness crisis”
But, to put it bluntly, our advice team is tired. We’ve been working non-stop for over three months now, relying on donations from the community, to prevent the homelessness of some of the most vulnerable people in society – people who this government have granted protection to. The fact that these people face destitution as soon as they are given the right to build a life in the UK is an appalling reality for them to be confronted with, and it shouldn’t be left to NGOs to pick up the pieces of a government backlog clearance affecting thousands of people.
It doesn’t have to be this way. We and other refugee NGOs are calling on the government to financially support local authorities that are overwhelmed with homelessness cases, which is having a powerful knock-on effect on frontline NGOs like us. We call on the government to immediately extend the eviction notice period from 28 days to 56 days, to allow more time for newly recognised refugees to find housing, employment or benefits.
In the longer term, continuing to uplift Local Housing Allowance rates and changing the benefit cap are vital. Of course, building social and genuinely affordable housing is also essential. This is the only way our refugee community and our team can look forward to people being safely housed once they are granted protection here, rather than frontline NGOs always working against the odds to prevent the worst.
Leyla Williams, deputy director, West London Welcome
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