Migrant Crisis Begets Housing Crisis: Private Landlords Asked to House Illegals as Hotels Reach Capacity

Amid the ongoing migrant crisis in Britain seeing hotels across the country filled to the brim with illegal migrants while their asylum claims are processed, private landlords are reportedly set to be offered long-term leases from the government to house the overflow of migrants.

Next week, the Lincolnshire County Council will reportedly consider a move towards expanding the migrant hotel scheme to private landlords in the county, who will be offered fiuve-year leases by controversial government contractor Serco, as well as paid repairs and maintenance of their properties in exchange for housing migrants, at taxpayer expense.

Currently, there are eight hotels and venues closed in the area because they have been filled to capacity with mostly young, single, male migrants, with the county regularly hitting the 500 migrant maximum over the past year.

The move, according to the Lincolnshire Echo, comes as national funding surrounding the migrant housing scheme is set to change. At present, local counties do not receive direct funding per asylum seeker they house, however, a measure set to go through parliament would see them receive some £3,500 per bed occupied by a migrant.

Under the scheme, local areas would only be expected to take in a number of migrants equivalent to 0.5 per cent of its local pollution, which would equate to around 500 for Lincolnshire. Yet, residents have already apparently had enough of the programme, with some in Skegness accusing local officials of turning their coastal town into a “dumping ground” for migrants.

Commenting on the plan to pay landlords, former editor of The Sun newspaper Kelvin MacKenzie told GB News’ Laurence Fox that it will likely serve to increase costs in the rental market, which he noted is already “through the roof” in much of Britain.

“What does that mean for the rents for everybody else because that’s an amount of housing which has disappeared and not available to the indigenous group?” he questioned.

“This is an opportunity for the Conservative party to lead and were they to solve it… they would get a reward at the polling booth,” MacKenzie added.

At present, there are around 40,000 migrants being put up at taxpayer expense in at least 419 hotels across the country at a cost of up to £7 million per day. With the government expecting an additional 65,000 illegal boat migrants to land in Britain this year, those figures are likely to continue to rise.

In December, Prime Minister Rishsi Sunak said that his government would seek to end hotel the accommodation programme for migrants and begin distributing them to military installations, holiday camps, and student accommodations.

However, there was no indication as to when this supposed ‘getting tough’ action would take place, or indeed that the government was actually intending on housing them in private residences.

In addition to the implications for rental prices, the plan also is fraught with security pitfalls, given that the Home Office has already admitted to losing track of hundreds of migrants staying at supposedly “secure” hotels and therefore are unlikely to be able to keep track of migrants in homes spread out through the country.

Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka