'It's not fair, and it must change'

As the issue of immigrants occupying social housing in London has gained prominence, I sketch out what I believe the main objections to the status quo to be

The publication of a video about social housing by malevolent twink Jack Anderton has yet again brought the issue to the forefront of X/Twitter discourse. In what has now become a semi-regular occurrence, Anderton outlined various statistics on housing of a given inner-London borough, then highlighting how much of the social housing was occupied by immigrants, before finishing off with his characteristic slogan ‘this is not right, it’s not fair, and it must change’.

The videos address what has been dubbed the ‘Social Housing Phenomenon’. A good summary of the phenomenon can be found in the Pimlico Journal article of the same name. In brief, it refers to the fact that large sections of London real estate are occupied by social housing, rising to over forty percent in central boroughs such as Hackney and Southwark, and those discounted social homes are overwhelmingly and disproportionately allocated to immigrants and their immediate descendants.

The issue escaped social media containment at the end of last year, when professor and pundit Matthew Goodwin incautiously stated on GB News that almost half of social housing in London was headed by someone who was ‘not British’. The actual statistic is that almost half have a foreign-born household head, many of whom have British citizenship, so the reaction to Goodwin’s statement became side-tracked with a tediously pedantic debate on what it meant to be British. There have also been a trickle of articles broadly addressing the Social Housing Phenomenon, such as by Louise Perry and Henry Hill, suggesting the issue is starting to break into the mainstream.

Goodwin especially received significant pushback, largely from fellow academics, who accused him of being intentionally misleading. The main contention was over Goodwin’s invocation of the label ‘immigrant’ and his argument that ‘British people need to be housed first’. Questions were raised over the motive for such a statement, and why the occupancy of social housing by immigrants specifically had been highlighted. After all, the economic opportunity cost of social housing occupying prime real estate remains even if that housing is filled with indigenous Britons.

I therefore want to sketch out what I think are the three main reasons there has been such a pushback specifically on immigrants occupying large amounts of social housing in London. Undoubtedly, some hostility is animated by racial animus, and certain comments made on social media attest to that. Nevertheless, I don’t think such guilt-by-association ought to taint objections on the whole, which I do think are valid and are worth addressing.

---

We’re all in this together

The basis of the welfare state is built upon the notion of cooperation and sodality. The original idea was that it would function as a kind of national insurance, whereby everyone would pay in through their taxes, and if one were to find themselves the victim of a series of unfortuitous circumstances, then the welfare state would provide some reprieve, ensuring at least a minimum standard of living could be maintained. Social housing was a part of that broader framework, giving the British lower classes the opportunity to live in modestly dignified and sanitary housing, while also allowing for the clearing of slums that blighted many British cities. The book Municipal Dreams gives an excellent history of social housing in Britain, and even managed to make me sympathetic towards those brutalist carbuncles that encroach on much of the landscape.

As the book highlights, social housing was not originally the exclusive domain of the lowest classes, often extending to middle class professionals. In this way, there was a sense that it was a common asset which one had a genuine personal stake in. The decline since the 1980s in the amount of social housing, as well as changes to the allocation system to one which prioritises the most desperate, has altered that relationship. For the highly taxed young professional, finding themselves living in a Zone 3 house share rather longer than anticipated, there is no sense in which the social housing that their taxes pay for are a common asset which belongs to them. They know it is an asset that will never be made available to them. Feelings of frustration and disillusionment naturally follows.

This feeling is exacerbated by so much of social housing being occupied by immigrants, since it breaks those principles upon which the welfare state was premised. For indigenous Britons, one can make an argument that even if they are currently taking from the collective welfare pot, then at least their parents or grandparents before them paid in, either financially or through service to the country (the Homes fit for Heroes campaign following the First World War marked an important advance for social housing, and operated on the basis of worthiness due to service). A claim to the patriotic cooperation that underscores the welfare state may also be made, given that British tenants are unambiguous members of the national community.

With immigrants, however, such arguments become more tenuous. While some may have worked and briefly been net contributors, the fact of them needing subsidised housing suggests that they have most likely always been net-recipients, taking from the collective pot without having ever contributed. Nor can they claim a stake in the pot due to historic family contributions. There may also be a sense that they are not fully members of the national community, and thus not entitled to the profits of national solidarity.

This is perhaps the most contentious claim and depends heavily on one’s notion of the British nation, and what the normative guidelines ought to be over who is properly a part of it. National identities are an inherently exclusive category, so any systems built on a notion of national solidarity will necessarily have to demarcate who is part of the nation and who is not. Some hold that line to be incredibly wide, meaning anyone who finds themselves on British soil should be regarded as a member of the national community, regardless of their background or legal status, and thus entitling them to the same benefits as everyone else. In practice, though, most people are more restrictive in their definition, and are unwilling to show the same amount of solidarity towards those with whom they share no values, culture, religion, history, etc.

The high occupancy rate of social housing by immigrants thus strains the justification for it on the basis of notions of solidarity and mutual cooperation, in a way which is less pronounced when the tenants are British.

‘Local housing for local people’

‘Local housing for local people’ is a phrase beloved by councillors desperately trying to assuage the objections of local residents to new developments. It’s a slogan that I’ve seen plastered along construction fences that circle new social housing developments, invoking the sense that those with historic ties to an area have a higher stake than outsiders, and an abstract right to be prioritised in the provision of local services, such as housing.

But the data on social housing occupancy puts a significant strain on the definition of ‘local’ here. As my own contribution to the discourse showed, councils are giving social housing to immigrants on the basis of them having ‘strong links in the area’, despite them having arrived in the country less than two years prior. My own definition of a ‘local person’ would be quite a bit narrower, usually including having grown up in the area, and counting the amount of time lived there in decades, not months.

This de-prioritisation of local people in favour of those defined as being most in need, regardless of their relative lack of links to an area, seems unfair. People who grew up in a given area of London and with ties going back generations are left to fend for themselves, often forced to move away from their family, friends, jobs and communities. Meanwhile, those who have just turned up are given a subsidised and secure tenancy afforded to them by the very taxes of those forced to move further afield.

There may be a willingness to subsidise housing for London’s historic communities, such as the near-extinct Cockneys, on the basis that they represent a valuable historical part of the city, and that the city would be poorer without them. It seems unfair and arbitrary that the communities who made London what it is today should be forced out of the neighbourhoods they founded due to real estate fluctuations that are beyond their control.

But such arguments do not hold for immigrants, who by definition will not have generational ties to an area. There is no reason why immigrants who have moved to London should be given social housing over British people from other areas of the country, who would otherwise move there were it not for the city’s prohibitively high private rents. Neither has a strong claim to being one of those ‘local people’ for whom new local housing is supposedly being built. Instead, if the state is to continue subsidising housing in central London, it should make good on its claim that it will go to genuinely local people.

Myth-busting

The argument that this country needs immigration for the sake of economic survival has been made ad nauseum. It broadly goes like this: ‘Britain’s population is aging and our worker to dependent ratio worsening. We therefore need to bring in immigrants to work in sectors where labour shortages have emerged, and these immigrants’ taxes are also needed for the continued fiscal health of the state’. It is on the basis of this rough argument that historic increases in immigration have been justified in recent years.

So the disproportionately high number of immigrants living in social housing poses a conundrum. If these people are so good for our economy and are needed for the fiscal boost they provide, how come they cannot even provide housing for themselves? Are we meant to believe that those in receipt of enormous housing subsidies are to be net tax contributors and pay for our pensions? It just doesn’t add up.

This is perhaps the simplest and least controversial objection to London’s immigrant social housing population. On a crudely economic basis, having immigrants in social housing is evidently not good for the country, and undermines the argument that mass immigration has taken place for our collective economic benefit. If this were the case, then taxpayer money would not be needed to house these economically beneficial immigrants in some of the most expensive real-estate in the world. So if we are serious about using immigration as a tool for increasing economic prosperity, housing immigrants in London social housing becomes untenable.

---

I think that these three points, the undermining of national solidarity, the usurpation of local people, and the discrediting of economic myths around immigration, represent the main sources of frustration regarding immigrants in London’s social housing. I believe all three to be valid objections, especially the last point on the economic inefficiency of the status quo, while the other two are more normative. There are other objections which I have not touched upon, such as social housing often being the incubator for crime in London, since this is a point not strictly related to immigrants. Ultimately I imagine the issue will continue to gain in salience as awareness of the data is spread, and more people independently come to the conclusion that the system is fundamentally unfair and ripe for drastic reform.