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Hello and welcome to the Migration Also podcast. I'm Rob McNeil and I'm Jackie Broadhead and Jackie.

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Today we're talking about housing and Oxfords.

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Rather excitingly for those of us who live here. And how this relates to migration and asylum issues.

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So, Jackie, let me start by asking you the very basic question Why Oxford and in fact, why housing?

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Yeah, I think this is a I think, quite an exciting podcast for us because we're zooming in on Oxford as a case study, you know,

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thinking about what it means to consider the affordability and accessibility of housing for newcomers,

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um, in our own city and the impact that the type of city that Oxford is.

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Um, everybody who lives and works here will know about the affordability challenges of housing in Oxford.

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And then what does that mean when we're thinking about, um, accommodation for all newcomers,

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but in particular for asylum seekers and for refugees and what some of the challenges have been.

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So trying to make that link between very specific, very targeted housing for one group, but where that sits in a city that, you know,

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some people have described as having a housing crisis, um,

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and in particular housing kind of affordability crisis and what that effectively does and where some of the solutions might be.

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You know, housing often feels like a completely intractable policy problem, particularly around affordability.

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So if you're trying to solve some of the problems in one small part of the system, can you do that?

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Or do you have to think about the whole thing in the round to be able to, to kind of tackle some of those issues?

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And if you do have to think about tackling housing affordability for the whole of the city,

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doesn't that feel like a kind of overwhelming policy problem that you're never going to be able to tackle for one particular group?

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And that's those different levels we thought would be really interesting to tackle through the prism of one city.

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And because of our biases, the Migration Oxford podcast, we've we've chosen to do that with Oxford.

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So can you just do me a favour and just explain a little bit about how the system

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for asylum housing actually works in the UK and what's changed in recent times?

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Yes, this is really important, I think, for the context of this discussion,

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because both the system in the UK is very particular and there have been some really big changes.

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So the first thing to say is that housing for asylum seekers isn't controlled locally.

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It's not the responsibility of the local council, for example.

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Um, it's controlled nationally by the Home Office and through a number of private providers who find accommodation,

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often in competition with the council or with other private landlords, particularly when housing is scarce.

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And that's one of the reasons why we really wanted to link asylum seeker housing through to broader questions of housing affordability,

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because the housing of asylum seekers isn't in a bubble, it's sitting within the same, um, provision of housing that's that's happening for everyone.

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And as a consequence of that, the Home Office have taken quite a few policy decisions recently, broadly speaking,

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to move asylum seekers out of more sort of community based housing and into different types of solutions.

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So whether that might be former military barracks, whether that might be a kind of really extensive use of hotels,

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or whether that is most recently and, and most kind of notoriously, I would say,

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the very short lived booby Stockholm barge that was used to house, uh,

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a number of asylum seekers for a very short time before it was discovered that there was the Legionella bacteria and it had to be evacuated.

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So this is a really big shift to say, actually, you know, if we think about it, we step back.

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This is simply saying we're not going to focus on having asylum seekers within communities.

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We're going to focus on them being kind of somewhere over there.

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But over there is always still within a community.

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Um, it just is often very far from Oxford, because in a place like Oxford,

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where there's incredibly expensive housing, um, it's unlikely that you're going to find those sorts of areas.

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Um, at the same time, there've been some other big changes that are really affecting asylum seekers and refugees.

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Um, for unaccompanied asylum seeking children, uh, the policy of the Home Office placing them in hotels rather than in foster care,

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something that is the responsibility of the previously was the responsibility of the local authority.

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And last but not least, when people get a decision, when they move from being an asylum seeker to being a refugee.

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The Home Office recently has changed the policy of giving around 28 days for people to be able to find accommodation within the community,

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and they've moved that down to seven days,

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a really short amount of time to kind of get all of the paperwork in place to be able to kind of find that sustainable solution.

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And all of these things, I think, feed into how we talk about both the housing.

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Tuition for asylum seekers and refugees in Oxford.

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And then link that into just the process of finding housing and the affordability of housing in the city itself.

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A of somewhat different but related shift has been.

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The University of Oxford has recently been awarded this university sanctuary status.

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So can you just explain a little bit about what that is and what that what that means for fair housing for asylum seekers and refugees in the city?

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Absolutely. I think it would be kind of remiss, certainly,

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for us to talk about housing and asylum seekers within Oxford and not talk about the role of the university and the role that the university has.

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I mean, within the housing market in general, obviously, but also the role that it can play, particularly for refugees.

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And what it means if you become a university of sanctuary.

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Is that just a symbolic thing, or does it have kind of practical changes that might be seen for some of the kind of newcomers in the city?

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Obviously, the, um, the university is a very significant employer of newcomers.

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And one of the things that we talk about in the podcast is the way that that

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community of people from all around the world who live in Oxford via the university,

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the way that that might create an atmosphere of welcoming and an atmosphere of a sanctuary.

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Um, but more practically, we might look at things like, um, the, uh, Ukraine Sanctuary Scholars Program.

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Um, so the ways in which we might be having people coming to the university and supported practically by the university,

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um, but they're very small numbers. And given that this is quite a recent thing for the university,

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I think there is something about what the role of Oxford itself in looking at its role in housing more

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generally and in providing a kind of atmosphere of sanctuary and welcoming for people who might be scholars.

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So people who are coming here. Um, under the the Scholars at Risk program, for example,

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but also for asylum seekers who aren't associated with the university pathway but whom have a link to the city,

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because this is where they've been, they've been placed.

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And therefore the university forms a huge part of the the life of the city, and so can help to create that atmosphere of sanctuary and welcoming.

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Well, on that note, I think it's time to move over and speak to our brilliant panellists.

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I'm joined by Tiger Hills, a co-founder of the Spatial Action Lab, an urban political geographer at the University of Oxford.

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Harry Reid, policy and advocacy co-ordinator. Asylum, welcome and Jack, a volunteer at asylum welcome right here in Oxford Tiger.

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We all know that Oxford is facing a crisis of affordable housing,

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and we're going to talk today a little bit about how that intersects with housing for migrants and newcomers.

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Can you tell us a little bit about what some of the main housing challenges are in a city like Oxford?

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Yeah. Um, sure. So I think to place this kind of whole conversation into some context,

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it's important to to recognise that the issue of housing availability and affordability, you know, isn't unique to Oxford.

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Um, but what I would say is, within the wider UK housing crisis, Oxford represents a particularly acute case.

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So Oxford is the least affordable, um, UK city for housing, with average house prices over 15 times the average salary.

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Um, that's in 2022. Um, and the cost of housing, as well as a shortfall in council housing,

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puts homeownership out of the reach for many people in Oxford and pushes them into a very competitive rental market.

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So the percentage of households that rent their home in Oxford is around 30%, as compared to, say, 20% in the whole of England.

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Um, and renting in Oxford is particularly expensive.

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We have some of the highest, um, kind of monthly rents in the whole of the southeast.

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If we think about Oxford's housing landscape specifically, we do have kind of a unique factor,

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which is the presence of the two universities, both of which are actively kind of, um, increasing their student populations.

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And this does drive private rental costs up.

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Um, as well as presenting another hurdle for the city council when they look to build um, Council of Affordable Housing.

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So what we see in Oxford, unfortunately, is that people are either pushed out of living in the city or pushed out of housing altogether,

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and homelessness is kind of a real concern. Um, so just to give some context around that, you know, in the first quarter of this year,

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around 79 households were estimated to be homeless as compared to 43 last year.

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And we don't have precise figures for Oxford, but we do know from homeless accounts in London that migrants make up 50% of that.

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So really, that's where kind of this whole conversation started for us.

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It's kind of startling that we don't necessarily even have the estimates for the way that that impacts migrant communities in Oxford.

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Harry, I wonder if you could just give us a sense of how.

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Prices of affordable housing for everyone across the city impacts migrants in particular.

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So there's a crossover between the crisis in affordable housing in general in Oxford and then the crisis for people,

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particularly who are coming out of asylum accommodation because their refugee status has been granted.

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So if we think about what a person needs when they're entering the private rental market,

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and I say private rental because the number of people entering council housing is so extremely small that the

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vast majority of our clients do go into the private rented sector and they require an income or bank statements,

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particularly as the number of landlords who accept universal credit is very low.

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They require references from previous landlords, a guarantor, a deposit, um, English language skills to be able to navigate the system,

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IT skills and access to a computer to be able to search on Rightmove and everything else.

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Uh, ID and ideally a credit history.

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These are things which this particular client group does not obtain very easily.

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And the inflexibility in the system, which is to do with the high demand on housing,

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means that they just end up at the bottom of the pile competing with, you know, professionals.

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People are working full time. You know, what would be considered by landlords to be more desirable candidates?

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And it just means that this client group is pushed into temporary accommodation, potentially sofa surfing, homelessness and even rough sleeping.

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Do you think that it's mainly a case of it being kind of more acute for people in that in those circumstances,

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but effectively the kind of same issues that are facing everybody?

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Or are there kind of very particular challenges for people either, um, coming through the asylum system or newcomer arrivals in general?

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A lot of the issues do affect everybody, and maybe there are additional layers that might not be measurable,

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but to do with perceptions, prejudices, discrimination that might be going on behind the scenes that we can't necessarily measure.

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There are particular issues which affect refugee populations, including no recourse to public funds, not having the right to work,

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not having that history of being in the UK and where people are living in home office accommodation.

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A lack of clarity around what happens to them.

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For example, um, young people in supported accommodation, uh, supported by housing benefit.

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But if they begin working, they lose the housing benefit and they can no longer afford that support accommodation.

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And that means that for those people, actually getting a job can lead to homelessness, uh, lead to eviction because they can't pay their rent.

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And then being on the street and then most likely losing their job. So it's a vicious cycle there of, um,

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not being able to find an employment situation that they're earning enough to pay the

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equivalent of the housing benefit for the supportive accommodation that they're in.

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There's the general accommodation issues that are happening across Oxford.

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And then there's also this very specific asylum accommodation that is a kind of centralised thing that's procured by the Home Office.

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Um, and that's been in the news a lot recently, um,

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with moves by the government to remove some of the kind of protections for that accommodation, including increasing occupancy, um,

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eroding some of the kind of basic health and safety standards, um,

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and also just moving people who are claiming asylum out of kind of more community settings and into things like barracks and,

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and others that we might talk about.

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Jack, I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about that and, and how that has kind of affected you on a day to day basis?

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Uh, yes. Um, when it comes to the, uh, the accommodation in Oxford, uh, at the moment, I think, uh,

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there are more than 650 people, uh, who lives in the, uh, Home Office in Oxfordshire and therefore hotels as well.

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And then, uh, compared to the, uh, the fact that statically in back in 2019,

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there were only 50 people sadam seekers who lives in uh home office support accommodation,

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but now it's more than 12 times of the the population back in 2019.

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So when people arrive here there is no rights to choose where you live or uh, what kind of accommodation would you like.

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And you need to show them that you are destitute, and then they're going to give you,

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uh, an accommodation and they have to share with you have to share rooms with people.

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And roughly the room, the square feet of the room is about, uh, two feet square room.

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And then you have to share with somebody else, uh, with strangers. And there are some people under 18 who have to live in those kind of accommodation.

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And yeah, when it comes to safeguarding, safeguarding rules.

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And I said there's no privacy, lack of privacy.

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And it's kind of stressful living with somebody who we have come through a very traumatic, uh, situation back in their country.

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So it's so quiet, crowded, so crowded.

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And, um, there was no choice basis. And it can affect you psychologically, mentally.

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And it keeps you awake. Yeah. It's kind of I would say it's, um, torturing people, um, psychologically and mentally.

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Harry, there have been big changes that have happened in asylum accommodation,

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kind of moving from more community based settings and an increasing sense of pressure from the system.

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What do you think some of the causes of that? Um, why are we seeing this move towards increasing occupancy, moving out of community settings?

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The, the type of things that Jack has spoken kind of powerfully about.

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Are they inevitable in a, in a housing crisis or are they choices that are being made?

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I think that what we're seeing today is compounded by a number of government initiatives and new policies which have been introduced.

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So most recently the Illegal Migration Act, um, which states that people who arrive in the UK by unsafe routes or irregularly,

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or what the government would refer to as illegally, do not have the right to claim asylum in the UK and must be immediately put into detention,

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and then kept there until such point as they can be removed from the UK.

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Um, so far as people who look at the policies, analyse it,

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and from the perspective of a charity who's trying to understand how to best support our clients in this political.

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We can't understand how that's going to happen, how that many people are going to be put into this type of temporary accommodation and

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then sent to a third country when no agreements are currently in place for that to happen.

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So for as long as the political environment is just focussed on putting people into temporary accommodation in order to remove them from the country,

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there will be these huge numbers of people in unsuitable accommodation that includes hotels.

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That includes barges, it includes military accommodation.

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Whatever new system the government develops in order to keep large numbers of people accommodated once.

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Um, but this is a political choice not to move people more quickly through the system.

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There are alternatives. And just recently, the government published its Alternative to Detention pilot project.

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But we have not been able to read the report on it.

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Um, the conservative government agreed to do four pilot projects for alternatives to detention.

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They have currently run two. And the second one, the results are being published, but we're not able to see them.

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So it's clear from that that there are alternatives.

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Um, but these do not seem to be being prioritised.

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What seems to be being prioritised is the spectacle of holding large numbers of people in one place and pointing to these people and saying,

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these guys are the problem. When it's far more complex than that.

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Tiger. Sometimes it feels like there's the kind of political imperative that Harry was talking about really powerfully.

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But then it does intersect with housing affordability crisis that you've spoken about.

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And so when we're talking about an affordable housing crisis, and then we add migration into the mix,

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that's a very real kind of policy problem that maybe doesn't have easy solutions.

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What are some of the things that you have been looking at as to how a city like Oxford could both tackle an affordability crisis within housing,

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and provide the kind of community based support for newcomers and asylum seekers

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that might actually improve some of the situations that we've heard about.

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I think that's a really pertinent point around kind of how those two things overlap.

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Housing affordability becomes this kind of front line,

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or potentially flashpoint for creating conflict between the kind of local community and new arrivals in Oxford,

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because, as you say, there's kind of pressure on everyone living in Oxford or everyone who wants to live in Oxford.

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And then there's this perception that more people are arriving and it's a supply and demand issue.

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So I think, you know, housing and thinking about housing is a really important kind of moment in that,

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in that debate, in that conversation, in terms of where I would see kind of solutions coming in.

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I think, you know, we have to recognise that it is a particularly bleak landscape for asylum seekers at the moment in terms of their housing,

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um, and home situation.

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And so one of the things that we've been trying to explore is how we can create other spaces in the city that are more welcoming and that

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can kind of supplement or at least provide a space of kind of community and belonging and welcome outside of the home or the hotel.

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I don't have a suggestion as to a housing policy solution, but how can we fill in some of those gaps?

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Is something that we've wanted to explore. And Jack, from your experience in participating in these um, workshops to explore community spaces,

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can you tell us about what has been going on in Oxford and what makes these type of community spaces welcoming?

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There's been lots of, uh, lots of community, um, activities around Oxford, and I think they're kind of welcoming,

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uh, more people, uh, with refugees background in the southern background.

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And. I would like to mention about churches and music groups and, and then and I said I'd work on myself because they were coming people.

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And it's also a place to meet new people who are who have more sympathise with

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more sympathy about your your situation and your contemporary issues about,

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uh, this whole situation. And I think Oxford is quite a nice place in terms of welcoming people because it's

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I see it's a diversity and lots of people come here and then and lots of students

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who is some understand the situation of the refugees and asylum seekers already

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thinking about this balance between almost working around a housing crisis,

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creating other types of spaces versus actually kind of creating sustainable programs.

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You mentioned the home offices pilot.

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You mentioned we might think about community hosting schemes, as we've seen through the homes for Ukraine program,

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um, or other kind of ways in which we might be able to improve the situation more systemically,

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like changes to the local housing allowance, so that the number of houses or the stock of houses that are available to people might change.

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You know, where do you see that kind of energy of asylum?

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Welcome going at the moment, and the type of changes that you would be keen to see.

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So this is always a difficult question to answer because the simple answer is more availability of more affordable housing,

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but it's almost so obvious that it's not worth saying.

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And because it's such a huge task, it potentially could seem unrealistic.

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And it is for an organisation as small as us.

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So putting to the side the fact that we're never going to find a real systemic solution unless we have more affordable housing in the city,

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then some other things that we could work on in the meantime would be finding ways to upskill people when they're in the asylum system,

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to develop the skills to be able to enter the private rental market when they have the right to do so, which includes IT skills.

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It includes understanding how the system works, preparing some of that documentation that they might not have access to,

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and also managing expectations because there's a perception that council

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housing is the only solution and people are very suspicious of private rental.

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I think we need to let people know that the likelihood of having a council house is extremely small,

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and so they need to start looking at other options as soon as they can.

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What we would love to see is more compassionate landlords. And so that's landlords who are willing to rent up the council rates, uh,

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in order to allow people on universal Credit or on low income to be able to have an affordable property.

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We hope to resolve some of these issues around people who go into work losing their benefits,

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also losing their ability to pay for their accommodation.

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That seems like something very simple, and it's the case for young people in supported accommodation.

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It's also the case with people in home office accommodation. There's currently not a lot of clarity around the policies for that,

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so not having the right to work is another big issue that we're very passionate about campaigning for.

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But there is a big overlap, not only in that when people don't have the right to work and they leave the job market,

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then they then don't have the proof to show that they're responsible people who are going to pay their rent.

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And but it also means that when eventually they do get the right to work in home office accommodation,

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maybe because they've been in the UK for over a year, or maybe because the visa conditions prior to claiming asylum allow them to work.

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Um, they can risk losing their accommodation because they've started working.

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And that seems to be in opposition to the priorities for people integrating,

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becoming part of the community, contributing to the community around them.

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Um, so there are a number of different areas beyond just the fact that we want to see more affordable accommodation, that we can start campaigning on,

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uh, working with our clients, on just having a roof over their head, which is stable, secure, and it's not going to disappear suddenly.

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So many of the issues for the people who come to asylum.

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Welcome to speak to us. The housing is at the core. If you don't feel safe in the place where you live,

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if you've got black mould and you have a child and that child is getting ill because you're being exploited by a rogue landlord,

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because they're the only person you can find who's going to rent you a property, then suddenly your immigration status seems more difficult.

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Finding work is more difficult. Finding education for your children is more difficult.

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It just is at the basis of feeling safe and feeling like you have somewhere to live that is not going to suddenly disappear,

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just makes life in every other aspect more liveable.

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Absolutely Jack. We probably can't have this conversation in the UK at the moment without talking a little bit about the baby.

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Stockholm. This is the barge that the government procured as part of its plans for the accommodation of asylum.

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Because we know that 14 people in asylum accommodation in Oxford have received letters to move on to the baby.

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Stockholm. I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about this and how that's affecting people seeking asylum in Oxford?

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Yeah, it was about, uh, a couple of weeks ago that we got the bars later at night after 7:00,

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and then the receptionist, they told us that the bus would pick you up in the morning.

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So you have to you have to get ready before the best came. So there was no time to,

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to talk to good advice to our solicitors and to talk to somebody else to get a news suggestion about how we're going to deal with this, uh, letter.

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And there was, there was no time to you the letter at all, because we get the letter to 7:00 at night and the bus would pick us up in the morning.

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So there was no time to appeal the letter at all. And then they didn't give us no choice.

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And then, um, it was a very short period of time of notice that you're going to move the bus.

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And because there is one reason that I could I would like to mention is, uh, you came here in Oxford and you communities,

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so you have friends and you try to contribute more in the communities the way you could.

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And then and then the government just people randomly.

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So it doesn't make sense. I mean, uh, some people who got the letter already got the questionnaire and then they still got the parts letter.

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So they're supposed to be in the, uh, sort of support accommodation for, for a couple of weeks until the decision has been made.

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So I see there's no point how they choose people and why they choose people to join.

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They just did randomly and. Yeah. And they've been.

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So the case is still on. So just to get ready to uh, for for the notice to move to the boards again in the few weeks.

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So yeah. Thanks, Jack.

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Tiger, just to finish with you, I think we've heard so powerfully from Jack about the contrast between a kind of national

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system that isn't linked to a community and isn't about kind of building a place of welcome.

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And we've talked about the particular challenges for Oxford.

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Do you think Oxford is a particularly good or particular bad place for this type of innovation

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around trying to solve some of these intractable questions around housing and affordability?

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What motivated the Oxford spatial Action? That was a recognition that Oxford is imbued with the politics of the university.

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And so often, as researchers and university members, we turn and look to study elsewhere,

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and we forget some of these more critical issues that are happening,

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um, not just in our own backyard, but the were complicit in, in some ways, being part of that community.

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That to be said, I think this has two impacts on whether Oxford is a welcoming space or not,

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because I've already spoken to the ways in which the university does impact the affordability of housing in Oxford.

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But the university also is filled with students and staff who are supportive of creating a

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welcoming environment and I think are politically aware of some of these kind of issues.

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You know what came out of the workshops with asylum Welcome clients,

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is that there was a sense that there were particular pockets of Oxford that were very welcoming, you know, asylum welcoming a key one.

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But also participants spoke to open craft nights that were happening at I think it was the missing being, um,

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and a sense of not feeling unsafe when walking down the streets and people being

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generally quite friendly in Oxford towards asylum seekers and new arrivals.

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Um, so I think it's important to kind of remind us that, you know, office is a welcoming place,

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despite kind of the broader sort of national landscape that can feel as though our government is trying to separate people.

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I think that's a great place for us to leave it.

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Focusing right back in on Oxford. Thanks so much to all of you.

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You've been listening to the Migration Oxford podcast. I'm Robert Neill and I'm Jacqui Broadhead.