Migrants Need 415,000 New Council Homes
Tom Newton Dunn, The Sun (London), August 17, 2011
Forty-five council homes a DAY will have to be built to house the tidal wave of immigrants, a shock report reveals.
This means 415,000 extra homes will be needed over the next 25 years–at a cost to taxpayers of £1billion a year.
The findings in the report by pressure group Migration Watch UK are a startling illustration of the immigration timebomb.
The building rate will be the only way to keep families off the streets–unless the current influx of 200,000 a year is stemmed.
Waiting lists for social housing in England have mushroomed by 60 per cent over the past eight years, largely due to immigration.
The report claimed just 17 per cent of people born in the UK live in properties owned by local authorities or housing associations. That compares with 80 per cent of migrants from Somalia and 49 per cent of those from Turkey.
Migration Watch UK accused politicians of covering up the problem. Chairman Sir Andrew Green said: “Either the Government must cut immigration very substantially as they’ve promised or they must invest very large sums in the construction of extra social housing.”
The crisis has been worsened by the Labour government’s failure to replace council houses that have been sold off. That slashed the number of homes available to the needy by almost 500,000 between 1997 and 2007.
The two worst affected regions are both immigration hotspots.
In London, 12 per cent of all families were on housing waiting lists in 2010, and in Yorkshire and Humberside the figure was 11 per cent.
