Ministers buying Teesside homes for asylum seekers

The issue is that it is no doubt another ill-thought-out knee-jerk action and will end up with hundreds of people living in an area with no opportunity to work or create businesses. This government is only interested in stats now that there is an election looming, not people whether they are UK citizens or not.
 
In the recent film by Ken Loach "Royal Oak" a large number of Syrian refugees are moved into a ex mining village in County Durham. On some streets half the houses are empty and were bought up by a Russian property company based in Cyprus. I suspect to save paying any taxes. The use a local property manager.

The refugees were put on a coach by Home Office officials and dropped off in the village.

I suspect the houses can be bought for £50k a piece and are rented out for £6k a year with £2k costs giving a 8% tax free return. A family of 4 can live in one of the houses that possibly needed 2 hotel rooms in London. Thats £120/week plus £40/week for utilities for terraced house in County Durham opposed to £240 a day in London for cheap hotel rooms. I suppose thats the economics of it, but the initial social issues it created were not nice i.e racists attacking them. With time though some interesting friendships/bonds developed.

I agree in this country we have enough housing, but there is crisis because where the housing is available there are limited employment and cultural opportunities and vice versa. Look at Oxford there are lots of jobs there, but limited housing. When someone wants to build significant housing its strongly opposed by middle class nimbies and usually the local MP joins in to oppose it even though their Government says they are pro-house building.
 
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People in general are very fair and reasonable but that reasonableness can disappear in the face of unfairness and to an extent poverty. There are hundreds of towns in the UK if the spread is even and properly funded then fine but if this is being concentrated on deprived areas and using them to house thousands that would not be a fair policy, especially if there isn't any investment in providing additional facilities for all the population.
 
SilentProf said:
We need them out of the hotels but they should be sent to every town and city in the country, not clustered together in places like Teesside even if it saves a few quid. Of course we wouldn’t be in this situation if they had just processed the asylum claims at a reasonable rate instead of intentionally letting the numbers build up to unmanageable levels.
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Problem is private companies paid to house them. So to maximise profits they buy where the housing is cheapest. Not much cash leftover from housing immigrant's in Kensington.
 
asredastheycome said:
Problem is private companies paid to house them. So to maximise profits they buy where the housing is cheapest. Not much cash leftover from housing immigrant's in Kensington.
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Thats really lazy though. Like Islington in North London, which is often used as a social barometer there are loads of poor parts of that area.
 
Unravel_Morrison said:
Why do you say that?

They even have a website welcoming refugees.
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Many people who are refugees seem to be placed in poorer communities as Ken Loach showed. While leafier surburbs have fewer. I used Tunbridge Wells as an example of higher income area of the UK.

It could be just as consequence of cheaper housing availability, but the end result is the same.
 
RAF Scampton seems to be going ahead, close to 4-5 Wealthy villages and in the West Lindsey constituency where if a blue carrier bag stood for election it would get in
 
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