54 Business & Finance
mojatu.com
Pathway Housing Solutions – Building Futures homelessness among black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) households rose 48%. Within this, there were further disparities. Homelessness among black households was up 42%, Chinese and others up 35% and mixed-race households up 33%, which all represent disproportionate rises. Homelessness among Asian households rose by 71%.
It is 20 years since the Macpherson Inquiry into the racially motivated death of Stephen Lawrence, which brought to the forefront the ingrained problem of institutional and structural racism. Institutional racism was defined by Sir William Macpherson in the UK as: "The collective failure of an organization to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture, or ethnic origin. It can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behaviour which amount to discrimination through prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness and racist stereotyping which disadvantage minority ethnic people." ‘This has led to unprecedented levels of dissatisfaction, confidence and mistrust in the system, statutory organisations and the services they deliver’. – Housing Inequalities & Homelessness in the Black Community Homelessness figures are disturbing for all communities, but again BAME communities fare worse than white communities in access to housing. According to Shelter, one in three homeless households are not white, compared to around one in seven in the general population. They state that between 2012 and 2017, there was a 22% increase in statutory homelessness. Among white households this rose 9%, whereas
The quality and availability of housing for BAME households is also a national problem. Non-white, or BAME households, are more likely to experience housing stress, such as overcrowding, poorer quality housing and fuel poverty, and to be more concentrated in England’s most deprived neighbourhoods. According to a report on race and housing issues, (Forty Years of Struggle A Window on Race and Housing, Disadvantage and Exclusion, Kevin Gulliver, by the Human City Institute, 2016) where he reviews a range of research from the 1960s onwards, he outlines how BAME communities have always experienced disproportionate housing need and faced discrimination in housing markets, both resulting from, and contributing to, higher levels of socio-economic disadvantage. He suggests that the housing needs of BAME communities have always been compounded by direct and indirect discrimination in housing markets in England. So, whilst he states that the housing needs gap between BAME and White communities has receded a little (aided by the BAME housing sector; decades of community activism, ‘race and housing’ policies and strategies; and race relations, equality and human rights legislation), disadvantage and discrimination along racial and ethnic lines persist. For example, social lettings to BAME applicants are not at levels expected for the extent of their needs, and lettings on affordable rent are similarly distinct.
