A campaign group has emerged opposing Right to Rent legislation on the grounds that it is racist.
The group, Homes Not Borders has launched a campaigning website. The group initially launched on Twitter last October and is now threatening direct action.
Essentially agents and landlords now have to check the residential status, passports and documentation of all new tenants, and face penalties, including criminal sanctions, for letting to illegal immigrants.
The campaign group says it is made up of people who have been directly affected by the policy, and says it is intensifying discrimination of migrants.
They cite research from the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants into the pilot scheme in 2015 that found, 65% of landlords interviewed would be less likely to rent to someone who required a little time to provide documentation and 42% would be less likely to consider renting to someone who does not have a British passport.
More worryingly, 27% would be less likely to open discussions with someone who ‘had a name which doesn’t sound British’ or ‘had a foreign accent’.
A statement on the Homes Not Borders website said: “The ‘right to rent’ will only intensify the discrimination that migrants and people of colour face in their search for housing, exacerbating the housing crisis for particularly vulnerable communities.
“Homes Not Borders are building a movement to abolish the racist ‘right to rent’. As people directly affected by this policy, we are organising our communities through building relationships, developing bonds of solidarity work across the diverse, migrant, non-migrant, communities of colour. We will use all tools at our disposal including direct action.
“This racist ‘right to rent’ must challenged. It must be resisted. It must be abolished.”
“right to rent” makes migrants, or people who might be read as migrants, feel attacked, despised and under constant surveillance.
— Homes Not Borders (@homesnotborders) January 23, 2017
Comments (6)
I assume the threat of ‘direct action’ also includes discussing the situation in a civilised manner with their local MP – rather than heaving a brick through an agent’s window? What don’t these people understand about the word ‘illegal’. But more to the point, why are we agents being set up to take even more abuse when we are being forced to do the Border Agency’s work for them or face the alternative of breaking the law? Like others here, we have always checked papers as a matter of course – duty of care to our client – but to report illegals to the Home Office ? Step too far.
Perhaps the Government when they decided to introduce these checks should have approached it from a different angle and done the checks themselves and issue a certificate to tenant permitting them to reside in the uk and have a website where agents/landlords could verify the authenticity of the document. That way this debate would not even have been raised.
A smart agent would have been doing this stuff for years, in 10 years of working in the industry I’ve always taken all these documents, now its inforceable its racist, no everyone, black, white, every creed has to provide its not picking anyone out. Some people just love a campaign, yes if you illegal immigrant then your being picked out if your legal/have a right why would you care or be offeneded, you’d have to do the same if you got a new job….
Discrimination is treating one group of people less favourably than another. If you do rtr checks on everyone then it’s not discrimination.
The only people it discriminates against are illegal immigrants, a big difference!
Sounds like a bunch of dodgy agents clubbing together to protest against actually doing any work and to protect their dodgy database of illegal lettings. Checking IDs, passports regardless, should be a matter of course and deciding on the right course of action should be in the interest of the Client, not theirs.