Alongside 50 other organisations, Boaz Trust has signed an open letter to Andy Burnham calling for the new Prime Minister to use his political principles to overhaul how people seeking asylum are accommodated. You can read the letter in full below.

Dear Prime Minister,

Firstly, we would like to offer you our congratulations on becoming Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. 

We are an alliance of mostly community and grassroots organisations across the UK that support people seeking asylum and refugees to secure housing. 

Through our work we see a system that is harming the people we support and the communities in which we work. People who have often experienced terrible trauma are forced into appalling accommodation and in the worst cases, have been left at the mercy of violent, racist thugs who have harassed, beaten, abused and even attempted to burn them alive. The profiteering contractors and the Home Office who run this system have shown little consideration for the people they house or the towns in which they operate.

Yet, the direction of travel looks set to make this worse. Recent announcements from the outgoing Prime Minister’s government, such as expanding the use of camps and detention, or forcing refugees into debt for living in asylum accommodation, would lead to more segregation, more division, more misery and more violence.

We recognise the crisis in how people seeking asylum are housed is a symptom of the wider housing emergency. Many of the decrepit, dangerous conditions people seeking asylum face are experienced by other people in temporary accommodation, which councils pay billions of pounds per year for. This emergency has been created by successive governments gutting our social housing system so that homes are now treated as investments, not the foundation we all need for strong lives and prosperous communities.

We are writing to you because we know that you will have seen this first hand when you were a Metro Mayor: the reckless actions of private contractors, the high rates of homelessness among new refugees, inequitable dispersal, the stripping of local authority funding and far-right agitators harassing and intimidating people who have come here to seek safety.

The root causes of this are the decimation of social housing and the privatisation of temporary and asylum housing, which have left the Home Office and local authorities unable to control their costs. Centralisation has meant big decisions that affect communities are not made with local consent, and outsourcing has created a system that’s hidden from scrutiny and accountability.

You have set out how, to fix many of the problems people face, the UK needs a focus on the biggest expansion of social housing since the post-war era, meaningful devolution of powers to local and regional authorities, more public control, and overhauling public procurement so there is real social value in the way services are outsourced.

We are simply asking that these ideals, values and policies be applied universally to all people in our communities, including people seeking safety.

We know this will take political courage. People seeking asylum – people who have fled war, torture, violence, and genocide – are among the most demonised members of our society. It’s time government listened to their stories rather than scapegoating them for political failure. Your ministers and the departments they run must treat people seeking safety with respect and dignity.

We look forward to engaging with you for what we hope will be a more hopeful, progressive, and inclusive future.

Yours sincerely,

Action for Refugees in Lewisham
Action Foundation
Adavu
Asha North Staffordshire
Asylum Matters
Boaz Trust
BRAVE Network
Bristol Hospitality Network
Bristol Refugee Rights
Brushstrokes Community Project
C.A.S.T. (Communities and Sanctuary Seekers Together)
Care4Calais
Darlington Assistance for Refugees
Devon and Cornwall Refugee Support (DCRS)
Doctors of the World UK
Greater Manchester Asylum Hotels Group
Greater Manchester Immigration Aid Unit
Haringey Welcome
Helen Bamber Foundation
Kairos Housing
Latin American Women’s Aid
Leeds Asylum Seekers Support Network
Leeds Destitute Asylum-seekers Support (LEDAS)
Lewisham Refugee and Migrant Network (LRMN)
Merseyside Refugee Support Network
NACCOM
North of England Refugee Service
Positive Action For Refugees and Asylum Seekers
Rainbow Haven (TEMCA)
RAS Voice
Refugee & Migrant Justice
Refugee Action
Refugee Women Connect
Refugees at Home
RETAS Leeds
Revive
Salusbury World
Shift Up
Simon Community Scotland
Smile Angel
Southwark Law Centre
St Augustine's Centre Halifax
The Magpie Project
Voices in Exile
Walking With in North Tyneside
West End Refugee Service
West London Welcome
West Midlands Anti Slavery Network
West of Scotland Regional Equality Council
Women Asylum Seekers Together
Women for Refugee Women