How Property Professionals can Help Solve the Asylum Housing Crisis

Former RAF sites, military facilities and even barges have been proposed. Some have been abandoned for safety or cost reasons, others met with fierce local opposition. Hosting schemes such as those run by Refugees at Home have helped thousands, but cannot address the full scale of demand.

The built environment holds solutions to the crisis

At the root of the debate over asylum accommodation is not only politics but questions relating to land and buildings. In other words, property professionals will be critical in resolving the current problems. And yet, strikingly, the sector’s expertise has been almost absent from the national conversation.

This silence is surprising because our skills are absolutely central to addressing shortages of land, the use of buildings and balancing competing needs.

Why property expertise matters

Housing asylum seekers has brought into focus the interface between planning and property law, both as a short term and long term solution. Hotels, often used under Section 98 support (at least until, according to a recent commitment, the government closes these hotels by May 2029), fall into a particular Planning Use Class (C1). Yet when their use shifts towards longer-term occupation, the law requires a change of use to a hostel, which is categorised as sui generis. At the heart of the hotel debate (as seen last week in the case of the Bell Hotel), therefore, is a planning issue.

Property law is also key to the potential to use houses, flats and shared accommodation (used under Section 95 support). Here the proposed Renters’ Rights Bill, which prevents landlords evicting tenants to make way for new occupants, already has implications for how asylum seekers might be housed in the private rented sector.

Put simply, many of the decisions that appear political are, in fact, a matter for property professionals and other stakeholders.

Solutions 

Property professionals can offers a more strategic and sustainable way forward. 

For example, there are the buildings currently falling out of use. More than 50 private schools have closed or announced closure since the introduction of VAT on fees. Could these buildings, often with accommodation attached, provide temporary housing?

Similarly, the pandemic showed what can be achieved quickly through the Nightingale hospitals programme. While many of those temporary hospitals are now underused, they provide a model for rapid mobilisation of space that could be applied to asylum housing.

No doubt it will be controversial, but commercial property is another resource. In 2023 Architects Journal reported that local authorities across Britain were sitting on enough empty commercial buildings to provide almost 20,000 homes. With planning permission for change of use, many could be repurposed as housing.

The importance of place

Planners are not only problem-solvers of buildings but also of place. Planning can be used to analyse whether proposed sites are accessible by transport, whether local healthcare or schools can cope, and whether placing asylum seekers in one location risks over-concentration. Planners can advise on design solutions – modular units, for example, that can be repurposed as affordable housing later – to ensure that temporary solutions do not become long-term blight.

A strategic solution

What the UK needs is a national or regional strategy for asylum housing, not the current patchwork of reactive measures. 
The housing of asylum seekers is not only a moral issue but also a built environment challenge. In moving beyond hotels, hostels and piecemeal solutions, then property professionals will provide the answers.

Faraz Baber, Chief Operating Officer, Lanpro