Navigating Statutory Homelessness Support: Impacts of Asylum and Refugee Policy

Homelessness among newly recognised refugees in the UK is not an inevitable outcome, but the product of policy decisions and systemic barriers that compound people’s vulnerability at the very point when stability is most needed. People emerge from the asylum process with a view to rebuilding their lives but face abrupt transitions, fragmented support and a hard-to-navigate housing landscape, even for long-term residents. The consequences negatively impact people’s chances of securing economic and social stability. The report discusses evidence on how asylum and immigration policies have combined with housing market pressures to exacerbate the likelihood of homelessness for newly recognised refugees. Decades of policy reform, spanning dispersal, outsourcing, restrictions on employment, and the Right to Rent have systematically undermined refugees’ ability to develop social networks, sustain themselves financially, and build the knowledge needed to secure housing. These long-standing constraints have produced conditions in which homelessness is not incidental but foreseeable. Against this context, the report calls for a more responsive, coordinated and humane approach to homelessness among new refugees