How will the refugees be housed in Britain?

if a good proportion of the empty homes are council owned, then some of the aid money could be spent on making them ok to live in, that will be up to individual councils to get cracking on. If privately owned, then they can't just be 'taken' as I imagine quite a lot will be waiting to be sold for the family of somebody who had died, we have two houses near us with that scenario.

I remember seeing on TV not so long ago whole housing developments in Northern Ireland that had been mothballed as no-one wanted/could afford to buy them. The government could buy up these for let.

Thanks for those figures Nelliemoser as well as for reminding us that asylum seekers aren't allowed to work. Many people seem to believe asylum seekers are generously funded, they aren't, they get significantly less than jobseekers allowance.

National empty homes week at the end of November. Hopefully most of them will have been filled by then.

rosesarered no homes??? "to answer the OP,we don't have houses ready for the refugees to move into,"

" The latest Government data on vacant dwellings shows over 610,000 empty homes in England with over 200,000 long-term vacant dwellings (that is homes unoccupied for over six months). Click on our statistics tab and latest statistics to find out how the data is derived and how to access information at an individual local authority level.
www.emptyhomes.com/#

If the asylum seekers were allowed to work many of then could probably be self supporting but the Government does not allow this. I am sure the government could find some way of solving this issue.
Many asylum seekers have good skills and could work for normal wages say to assist with preparing the homes that are needed for them to live in. This could help cover some of the government costs and give the people themelves some degree of self respect about feeling self sufficient.

Many of the Ugandan Asians thrown out of the country by Idi Amin did just that. They built up businesses having left Uganda with virtually nothing.

Just shows how ridiculous the bedroom tax is, Iam.
Sorry about your relative.
These problems seem to have disappeared from the radar at the moment.

It will come out of the aid money for the first year, as sara4 says. After that it will be cash-strapped councils.
I notice he is still talking about the spending review, but has managed to find an extra £500 million for Faslane which wasn't in the spending review.

They say it will come out of the aid money that we pay out, so will not be an added burden for councils.

I heard that the Government would pay for the immigrants for the first year, then after that the councils who take them in would have to foot the bill. And with budgets being cut where do they (the government) think the money will come from.

Yes, I don't disagree durhamjen. I have a close relative who is vulnerable and was allocated a 2 bed flat 25 years ago. He's had his 2 children to stay throughout their lives on a regular basis though they live primarily with their mum in her tenancy. He's facing eviction because he's been unable to pay the bedroom tax. He has health needs but isn't able to face the issues involved in going on the sick. He was so stressed by jobseekers and the Catch 22 situation of applying for 100's of jobs he was persuaded to go self employed. Job seekers was £75 a week and self employed he's earning slightly less but says his mental health is better due to less stress from the job centre.
I could scream, it's so unfair for him. Before anyone asks, yes he is hugely sympathetic to the plight of asylum seekers

I agree with you about building, Iam, but I think there should be two bedroom flats at the minimum.
A 1 bedroom flat means that you are saying that those in council or housing association property cannot share or have visitors to stay.
We only know that there is a shortage of 1 bedroom places since the spare room tax was brought in by this government.
The only difference on plan between a two and one bedroom property is the bedroom. All the other rooms are needed for whichever one is built. It is actually more economic to build two bedroom flats.

Why don't the government start building? We have a housing shortage and current government plans include forcing Housing Associations to sell the asset that keeps them being Housing Associations. Crazy (as Manuel would have said)

Building houses creates work,it could add to the existing apprenticeship programmes. I would start by allowing/encouraging local authorities to use the money raised by selling council housing stock to build council housing. We have a real shortage of 1 bedroom properties, and there are so many single men who have been living in the 2 bed flat they were allocated years ago but now face eviction due to bedroom tax arrears. They could move into the new 1 beds and allow families to move into their 2 bed apartments.

In our area there is a fair amount of brown field land and that should be built on before any (vanishingly rare) green belt land.

On a more radical note, why can't legislation be brought in to prevent overseas investors buying up property in areas in the south east as investment. Leaving it lying empty and neglected?

www.homeforgood.org.uk/respond/

to answer the OP,we don't have houses ready for the refugees to move into, if we did, then the councils would have used them to to home families already waiting. Other empty homes around the country can't simply 'be used' they belong to somebody. So, either council properties that need doing up are done up ASAP, or buildings other than houses as described in other posts, are got ready for families to move into.I think it would be morale boosting to be with other Syrian families, at least in the short term, so perhaps better to be housed with others.

lots of stuff on Facebook, not all of it any good, which is why I usually avoid it. Poems aren't meant to be taken at face vaue, but are thought provoking.This is a poor poem, but has a point.

Just came across this on Facebook:

if we have empty rooms
we have room
if we have wasted food
we have room
if we have ample water
we have room
if we have money to spend
on crap we don't need
we have fucking room
this island will not sink
the hospitals will not close
but there is no profit in refugees
if there was?
we would have room.

Ian Everett
Heel Turn Poet

So Merkel has told DC that they hate him and isolate him, dangerous talk.

Well said Harrigran - totally agree with your views. Damned if he does, damned if he doesn't.

Can't do anything right haha 3rd try:

www.theurbanexplorer.co.uk/ilford-polish-camp-devon/

Oops, forgot to close brackets

[[http://www.theurbanexplorer.co.uk/ilford-polish-camp-devon/][

[[http://www.theurbanexplorer.co.uk/ilford-polish-camp-devon/ found this showing images take. By an 'urban explorer'

Here in Brussels the local government is opening a large empty office building near the Immigration offices to house people, it will also house those waiting to be processed as well as those waiting for the results of their applications.
Catering will be provided and local Churches, Mosques etc are all involved in the process.
There are a lot of people here as it is one of the countries they 'pass' through on their way to the promised land,,,,,,,

TBF the site doesn't show the buildings as they are now harrigran. I haven't been up there for a few years but from what I can remember they were badly neglected.

Work to make it inhabitable ? the buildings are in a better state than most of the properties in the town where I live.

this place in Devon has been abandoned for years and is described as 'decaying'. I wonder how much work would need to be done to it, though, to make it inhabitable as temporary shelter? There must be other places like this around the country that could be put to use.
And before anyone jumps, I'm really not saying that any old sub-standard or even dangerously neglected buildings would be 'good enough' for the refugees. But I am suggesting that maybe these old abandoned buildings might be able to be refurbished and there is enough space there to home dozens of families while they 'get on their feet'. And they would be amongst their own people, which I would think they would want at first.

margaretx, trust the Germans to be ultra practical .