Property expert Russell Quirk has lashed out at the Home Office after it was revealed they have built up a stock of 16,000 properties for asylum seekers.
Despite a shortage of homes for young workers and families, contractors working for the Home Office are offering landlords five-year guaranteed full rent deals to take over the management of properties in a desperate bid to transfer asylum seekers out of hotels.
The properties are being used to house more than 58,000 asylum seekers across England, Wales and Scotland, according to the Telegraph.
Speaking on GB News, Quirk blasted the Government, branding them “haphazard, wayward and incompetent” in a scathing rant.
Russell Quirk has blasted the Home Office
GB NEWS
“This is not just asylum seekers, this is often people coming over on dinghies with no ID”, he said.
“They are then given priority by these idiotic councils and this haphazard, wayward, incompetent Government over and above those paying into the tax system.
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The Home Office has been building up a stock of properties
PA“The average rent in the UK is about £1,000 a month. The calculations just for this particular initiatives mean we’re still paying half a million pounds per day to rent these homes.
“Rishi Sunak’s ridiculous prophecy that he would appeal to the masses by taking asylum seekers out of hotels, all he has done is taken rental houses away from those paying into the system.”
Quirk went on to say that some councils are buying homes, which is stiffening up the market even further for first-time buyers.
“Winchester, Preston, North Norfolk, North Yorkshire, Waltham Forest, Portsmouth, Basingstoke are actually buying homes specifically for the purpose of housing asylum seekers”, he said.
“This is taking stock away from first-time buyers and stock away from renters who have very little choice right now.
“This is a disgrace.”
A Home Office insider told The Telegraph: “The department’s strong preference is for dispersal accommodation because it is so much cheaper and much more discreet than hotels. That’s not to say it’s not unpopular.
“Some of the contractors are taking properties in pretty normal streets. You can buy yourself a £300,000 house and suddenly find your next-door neighbour is a house full of asylum seekers. MPs are starting to report problems as a result of this.
“It has also been very heavily clustered in places where property is cheap – Hull, Bradford and Teesside. It is potentially damaging to these places because it creates ghettos which are terrible for integration.”
A Home Office spokesman said: “We continue to work across Government and with local authorities to identify a range of accommodation options to reduce the unacceptable use of hotels which cost £8 million a day.
“The Government remains committed to engaging with local authorities and key stakeholders as part of this process.”