An article by council insider and Nationalist contributor ‘Frustrated’.
The population explosion resulting from mass immigration since 1997 is creating a homelessness crisis in Britain as the demand for housing increasingly exceeds supply. This homelessness crisis is also becoming an increasingly expensive problem for local authorities to deal with.
The huge costs involved, especially in English local authorities, are driving many of them to the brink of bankruptcy! Many councils are struggling to pay for their statutory services for homelessness support including the provision of temporary accommodation for former ‘asylum seekers’, now given refugee status.
During the past year, the ten councils making up the Greater Manchester region have seen unprecedented numbers of people presenting themselves as homeless, significantly due to the previous Tory government’s ‘accelerated asylum scheme’ that gave tens of thousands of illegal immigrant’s refugee status.
This led to thousands of former asylum seekers being evicted from taxpayer funded accommodation in hotels and left without anywhere to stay. Consequently, they presented themselves as homeless at the local council offices, thus adding to an already acute homeless crisis at Greater Manchester councils and lengthening their housing register waiting lists.
In order to balance their books, Greater Manchester councils are cutting services, selling assets, raising their council tax, car parking charges, housing rents and various other fees and charges.
The lack of social housing in Greater Manchester has been made worse by council homes being lost through the Right to Buy scheme, which has significantly reduced their social housing stock. Some councils have lost nearly half of their social housing since the 1980’s due to the scheme. So sadly, for those social housing tenants that aspire to become owners of their rented home, the new Labour government may review, change, or even scrap the Right to Buy scheme.
Paul Dennett is Mayor of Salford and also the Deputy Mayor for the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA), and their lead member for homelessness as portfolio holder for ‘Housing First’.
So it is ironic that in 2023, Dennett worsened the homelessness crisis in Salford when he played a key role in attracting more ‘asylum seekers’ to be dumped in Salford by the then Conservative Home Office, when the Labour council he leads declared Salford to be a welcoming ‘Sanctuary City’ for refugees!
When these ‘asylum seekers’ were recently given amnesty with refugee status by the Home Office, they were evicted from hotels and had to be supported by Dennett’s ‘Sanctuary City’ of Salford. Mayor Paul Dennett initially, at great cost, reopened a former school in Swinton, which was then turned into an emergency overnight shelter for these new ‘refugees’ and kitted out with blow-up beds!
But now, in 2024, Dennett, in his role as Deputy Mayor of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, whined that overspending on temporary accommodation has become an “existential threat” to councils around the region. He cried that, “We are seeing councils up and down the country going bankrupt, and overspending on temporary accommodation is a significant element of that. This should be a huge concern across this country right now and for us in Greater Manchester.” !!!
According to the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA), the region’s councils expect to spend a total of £75 million on temporary housing this year as they struggle to deal with the growing demand for affordable homes from native Mancunians who are now joined by thousands of newly made homeless former ‘asylum seekers’, who have been given refugee status by the Home Office.
Sadly, in recent months Birmingham, Nottingham, Croydon, Thurrock and Slough have all issued a Section 114 notice after overspending their estimated income, effectively declaring bankruptcy! Across the North, cities such as Liverpool, Manchester and Sheffield are also perilously close to becoming bankrupt.
Credits:
Main Image: Unsplash.
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