56-day pilot scheme offers some hope to newly-granted refugees facing homelessness.
After many years of campaigning by refugees and the charities advocating on their behalf, the government has finally agreed to pilot a 56-day eviction period for newly-granted refugees leaving asylum accommodation, replacing (for now) the existing 28-day timeframe. For lots of people, this will sound like an obscure administrative detail. But in fact, it has the potential to affect communities all over the UK.
In the last 12 months, thousands of newly-recognised refugees have been plunged into homelessness. This is a horrifying ordeal for the people involved, many of them vulnerable, many of them trafficking and torture survivors, all of them legitimately seeking safety in the UK. Recent data released by CHAIN – a multi-agency database that gathers data on rough sleeping in Greater London – showed that being a refugee was the joint-highest reason for new rough sleeping in the capital in 2023/2024. The people experiencing homelessness in your communities are now increasingly likely to be newly-recognised refugees.
These are people who have been recognised by the Home Office as having genuine fears of war and persecution in their home countries, who have the legal right to be in the UK, and who are likely to spend their foreseeable futures – if not the rest of their lives – living in the UK.
Young Roots works with more than 1000 young refugees each year and has supported hundreds at risk of homelessness. One of the primary reasons that people become homeless after being recognised as a refugee is because they are required to leave their asylum accommodation and simply do not have long enough to make their own housing arrangements. They are expected to open a bank account, find work or apply for benefits, scour the barren private rented market and move into new accommodation – all within 28 days. For many people, especially the young people we support, they will be doing each of these things for the first time, in a new country, in a second language, with limited access to the internet and hardly a pound in their pocket. Additionally, many of these people have been separated from family and friends, and so they have very few contacts to rely on in times like these. It is no surprise then, that large numbers are unable to avoid homelessness at the end of the eviction period.
The 28-day eviction period is out of kilter with other important timeframes like benefit applications, homelessness applications and the private-rented housing market.
Many people will seek help from their Local Authorities. But Local Authorities are overwhelmed and under resourced, meaning often the first available appointment to discuss a homelessness application will be days or weeks into the eviction period. The shortage of housing available means Local Authorities are not able to source accommodation in some cases for several weeks after the person has become homeless. This takes a huge toll on their staff and their funds, as we know relieving street homelessness is more costly than preventing it.
It takes at least 5 weeks from the date of application for a first Universal Credit payment to be paid. So, with the current 28-day eviction period, even if a newly-recognised refugee can open a bank account and apply for Universal Credit on the first day of that eviction period, they will not receive their first payment until they have been homeless for a week. This means they have no funds to pay a deposit or first month’s rent on prospective accommodation. It also exposes them to increased risk of exploitation.
This combination of homelessness and destitution places newly recognised refugees in the worst possible circumstances for integrating into their local area, contributing to their community, and rebuilding their lives.
This is a system set up to fail.
A 56-day eviction period will not resolve this problem entirely. There are other systemic reasons such as housing availability, affordability for benefits claimants, Local Authority funding, and discrimination that all contribute to this growing problem. But a 56-day eviction period at least affords everyone more time to try to source new accommodation. It gives Local Authority housing teams the time they need to advise or assist in finding new accommodation, before the person becomes street homeless. It means there is time for opening a bank account and receiving Universal Credit, widening the range of housing solutions available to the person, which takes pressure off overstretched Local Authority housing departments.
It is a commonsense policy, which is both welcome and long overdue. It is a policy for which there is overwhelming consensus in favour. It is a policy, however, which is currently only a pilot scheme with no statutory footing. The government has said it will evaluate the pilot scheme and review whether it should become permanent. We are working to make sure that refugee’s voices are heard during this evaluation, and that the ways in which the 56-day eviction period improves their safety and welfare are not minimised by discussions of costs and bureaucracy alone.
It is time, surely, for refugees to have protection in law, of a reasonable eviction period that does not resign them to homelessness just as they finally find safety. For this reason, we are backing Baroness Lister of Burtersett’s private members’ bill in the House of Lords, that seeks to legislate for a reasonable 56-day eviction period, giving newly-recognised refugees a fair chance of rebuilding their lives in the UK. Baroness Lister specifically referenced Young Roots’ work on this issue in her speech at the bill’s second reading on Friday 13th December where she also shared the experience of Sayed, a young refugee affected by homelessness in the asylum system, supported by Young Roots.
Look out for our calls to action in coming weeks and months to support the bill as it progresses through parliament.
Everyone deserves a home.