Winter Appeal: ‘I was told I could stay in the UK — then kicked out of my asylum accommodation’

The day Habib received his decision letter granting him refugee status in the UK was one of the happiest of his life. The 29-year-old had fled imminent threats to his life in Afghanistan weeks before the Taliban seized power in 2021, leaving behind his pregnant wife and daughter, and had endured a perilous four-month journey across Asia and Europe. He travelled in trucks and walked across Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Bulgaria, Serbia, Austria, Germany and France. He was shot at by border guards, arrested, imprisoned, released, suffered starvation and ate leaves in a forest to survive, but eventually he got to the UK and claimed asylum.

He was housed by the Home Office in cramped hotel rooms and shared accommodation where he lived in fear of being deported to Rwanda. So when, after two years, he got the refugee status decision letter granting him “permission to stay” in the UK, it was a huge relief. He thought his worries were over and that he could start to rebuild his life and send for his wife and children. “It was a very joyful moment,” he said.

But a second letter from the Home Office precipitated a new crisis. Habib did not know it, but he was due to be evicted, given 28 days to “move on” from his Home Office-supported accommodation. He had two options: get housed by the local authority or rent privately. But councils, by statute, are only obliged to try to help within 56 days and private landlords would demand a hefty rental deposit he could not afford.

Habib said: “I begged the house manager where I was living to give me more time to find something but he said, ‘Sorry, tomorrow I change the locks.’ Even though nobody moved into my bedroom, they kicked me out. I was homeless for six months, sleeping on the floor of a friend’s house in London and when he had guests I had to sleep in the back of his car. I would walk down the street in tears. I was trying to get on my feet but I was increasingly distressed and in a bad way.”

Newly recognised refugees like Habib are among the fastest rising sub-group of homeless people, with local authorities in England reporting a huge 253 per cent increase over nine months in refugee households requiring homelessness support after being “moved on” from Home Office accommodation. Ninety per cent of local authorities are affected, says the Local Government Association.

The situation in which refugees are given 28 days’ notice to leave asylum accommodation —officially known as the “move-on period” — is completely out of sync with the 56 days within which local authorities help them find an alternative, so the system set up to hand over refugees from Home Office responsibility to that of local authorities is designed for failure. It results in discrimination against refugees and intolerable pressure on councils. It has led to refugee charities, homeless charities and local authorities calling for the move-on period to be doubled, bringing it in line with the standard 56 days mandated by the Homelessness Reduction Act for all other vulnerable members of society — such as children leaving care or people facing eviction.

Today The London Standard, as part of our A Place to Call Home Winter Appeal in support of refugees and people experiencing homelessness, is backing this plea to double the move-on period and for the Government to afford people more time to transition from asylum accommodation.

How you can help

HOW YOU CAN HELP

£10 could provide a young person travel to meet a wellbeing mentor and have a hot meal

£50 could provide travel to work or school for a month for an at-risk youth

£150 could refurbish a bike for an adult refugee giving them freedom to travel independently

£500 could train ten people with experience of homelessness to become homeless health advocates

£1,000 could enable one of our partners to fully support a young person throughout the year

It is an appeal that makes economic sense. Despite the additional cost to the Home Office of housing people for another 28 days, the overall savings to local authorities from reduced homelessness would result in net annual benefits to the UK of £4 million to £7 million, according to analysis by the London School of Economics and the British Red Cross.

Our call for change comes as we announce a £460,000 donation from This Day Foundation and a £70,000 boost from the Standard’s Dispossessed Fund, which builds on the £500,000 given by our appeal partner Comic Relief and takes the total amount raised by our appeal in just two weeks to more than £1 million. The Comic Relief funds will be used to support charities that help refugees and people experiencing homelessness, with This Day’s funding and the Dispossessed Fund donation directed exclusively to refugee groups.

Gary Lubner, founder of This Day Foundation, said: “Coming from a family of refugees, with both sets of grandparents fleeing persecution in eastern Europe, I have fought against injustice and sought to give back in the form of campaigning and philanthropy all my life. Growing up in apartheid South Africa, I have seen first-hand how people’s futures can be limited or destroyed by prejudice and a lack of opportunity. I believe in fairness and equality and know well how damaging prejudicial attitudes to those who are different can be. I am proud to support the Standard’s campaign to improve opportunities for those in our society who need it most.”

In Habib’s case, the need was indeed high: the council said he was “low priority as a single male” and told him to “find a charity to help”. Like many other newly recognised refugees facing homelessness, he turned in desperation to the Refugee Council, one of the organisations being supported by funding from This Day Foundation and by Comic Relief as part of our campaign. The council runs a Refugee Advice Project geared to support people who have received refugee status and who are transitioning from Home Office asylum support to mainstream support.

Gavriella Morris, senior case worker on the Refugee Advice Project, said: “The situation for newly recognised refugees is extremely difficult. To receive Home Office support during the asylum process, refugees must have exhausted all their savings and most of them are not allowed to work, so by the time they are recognised as refugees, they are living on roughly £8 a week and cannot remotely afford the deposit demanded by private landlords.”

She added: “Under current legislation, councils are only obliged to attempt to relieve homelessness in 56 days, whereas refugees are made homeless after 28 days. And what’s more, the 28 days does not give them time to get their Universal Credit claims processed, which typically takes at least five weeks, so they become destitute as well as homeless. It’s causing despair for very vulnerable people after a long ordeal at a time when they should be able to celebrate their new status in the UK.”

Asked if the move-on period would be reviewed, a government spokesman for the Home Office said: “We have inherited enormous pressures in the asylum system, but we are working to make sure individuals have the support they need following an asylum decision and to help local authorities better plan their assistance with homelessness.”

In a nutshell

Our winter appeal, A Place to Call Home, in partnership with Comic Relief, is seeking to help fund organisations in London and across the country that support asylum seekers and people experiencing homelessness.

The London Standard also spoke to masters graduate Hamida, 26, who was unable to safely return to her native Afghanistan after studying abroad and was made homeless shortly after receiving her refugee status in the UK. “The moment I got my status, I was overjoyed,” she said. “I kept reading the decision letter over and over, saying, ‘I can’t believe it!’. All the loneliness, all the depression I had been through in my 18-month wait for asylum, had paid off. I could dream again.”

Hamida added: “Two weeks later I got a letter telling me I had 28 days to leave the shared house where I lived and find a new home. It came as a shock. I was told the council would put me up, but the council said they could not possibly do it in 28 days and when I tried renting privately, landlords demanded a deposit I could not afford. I had nowhere to go. I called lots of charities and went to a friend’s home in London and asked to sleep on the sofa for a few nights. I was lucky to have that — many refugees have nobody and end up on the street or spending nights trying to keep warm in McDonald’s.”

Hamida turned to Refugees at Home, a charity that connects refugees to people with a spare room, which put her up for six months before she found something more permanent. “Without them, I would have been on the street,” she said. “I’m a postgraduate who just had an offer to study further from a top London university, but even I found the system incredibly hard to navigate. For many refugees, being made homeless on top of everything else can be the last straw for their mental health.”

MOVE ON PERIOD

The Move On period is the 28-day window imposed on newly recognised refugees in the UK by the Home Office to leave Home Office supported asylum accommodation and find new housing

Sixty per cent of local authorities in London say the 28-day move-on period for refugees has led to a rise in street homelessness, according to the Local Government Association. And 84 per cent of councils said extending the move-on period to 56 days would be the most effective way of reducing pressure on stretched budgets and services.

For Habib, his homelessness saga only ended after six months when he found a private landlord who would house him and the council agreed to pay the deposit and the rent. Now he has a job working with a glass company and has bought himself a new mattress. “For the first time in years, I sleep and I feel good,” he said. “I have my own place. It’s a huge weight off my shoulders. A home is essential to begin the rebuilding process.”

Habib’s wife urged him to leave Afghanistan to save his life. But he worries about her safety and is desperate to bring his family to the UK. He added: “Contact is difficult because women have no rights in Afghanistan and many people cannot have internet, so being in touch is hard. It’s been nearly four years since I left. I miss them so much. My daughters are four and three and I have never met my youngest one. My youngest daughter tells her mother, ‘Everyone else has a father — where is mine?’.”

The names of Habib and Hamida have been changed

To make a donation, visit: comicrelief.com/winter