A Swindon Advertiser correspondent tells us that 61% of housing association homes last year were given to “East European migrants”. This is the reply.
I was reminded of the old maxim don’t believe everything you read in the papers when I read Jeff Adams letter (Drain on Infrastructure). Jeff wrote that “in the previous financial year, 61% of housing association properties went to East European migrants”. That’s an extroardinary statistic, or at least it would be if it was true. I don’t know where Jeff got this figure from. A quick Google finds reference to the 61% figure in the Telegraph and the Express. The Telegraph said
“Housing associations are also letting a bigger chunk of their stock to people from these EU accession countries. In the last financial year, more than six in 10 (61%) homes went to nationals from accession countries, up from 54% in 2007/08.”
This is complete nonsense. The article even managed to mention that 91% of homes went to UK nationals! The Express was more accurate.
“In the last financial year, 61 per cent of homes that went to nationals from these countries came from the housing associations, up from 54 per cent in 2007/08.”
The real figure for new tenancies going to people from Eastern Europe, which you can see in the Department of Communities & Local Government Households statistical release of October 6th 2015, is just over 3%. More than nine out of 10 new tenancies still go to UK nationals.
Martin Wicks
Secretary, Swindon Tenants Campaign Group
Swindon Tenants Campaign Group 
It would seem big brothers propaganda machine is being ramped up, the question we should ask our self’s is : who is driving these story’s ?
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Sorry this is such a late comment in response to your October 2015 post in solidarity with national minority workers from East Europe.
State Racism continues to ramp up its Social Cleansing of immigrants and their class allies of tenants and workers – the kind of cleansing that justified NATO’s humanitarian bombing of Yugoslavia. Remember, Milosevic; who was blamed for the suffering of the many thousands of refugees forced to flee Kosovo by the so called ‘ethnic cleansing’ campaign. Thousands of Yugoslav workers were bombed out of their homes, not by Milosevic but by NATO. No need for cluster bombs in Britain, when we have the Housing Bill Smart Bomb (HBSB) that can target the enemy with pin-point precision.
If Milosevic really wanted to clinically cleanse the surplus population, he should have learned from the law making activities of the Property Investment Machine of Parliament (PIMP). One of the them, the Right to Rent, under the Immigration Law 2014 provides ‘statutory excuses’ to implicitly house mercenaries, dodgy NGO’s and returning para-militaries – fresh from their pillage, plunder and perfidy in somebody else’s country, whilst cleansing the rest.
Another, the 2016 Housing and Planning Bill, is gearing up to cleanse the unworthy victims of the working class, living in so called ‘ high-value’ properties in ‘low-value’ areas. Sheffield Hallam research (Feb 2016) has found that 66% of socially rented tenants have stuck two fingers up to home-ownership. Out of the remaining 33% less that 10% of tenants actually qualify for the Right to Buy. After all, who wants a lifetime of debt peonage under modern day imperialism.
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