By Keith Cooper, award-winning housing journalist
The death of Awaab Ishak was a national scandal, raising questions yet again about housing’s relationship with racial inequality.
Rochdale Boroughwide Housing took its time to apologise for linking the mould that killed him to his family’s lifestyle. Its handling of the matter left his dad in “no doubt” that racism was at play. The wider response to this tragedy was decisive and will likely define how landlords deal with damp and mould in their homes for some time.
But there’s another infant death that raises questions about racial inequality in housing that’s attracted less attention and a more mixed response from the sector.
Zakari Bennett-Eko was just 11 months old when he died in 2019 after his dad, a man of Black British Caribbean heritage, threw him into a fast-flowing river. The coroner’s inquest and serious case review into Zakari’s death found failings in multiple agencies.
But the review also points to the “social isolation and vulnerability” the family suffered for being moved into temporary accommodation miles from their Manchester home. Zakari’s dad also suffered racial abuse in the predominantly white area where his family was placed.
It’s well-known that black people are more likely to face homelessness than their white counterparts. My recent investigation for Inside Housing found that black households in particular are rehoused out-of-area to a disproportionate degree and so suffer all the vulnerabilities such displacement entails.
Such findings fall squarely into the “worrying but not surprising” slot. There’s tons of evidence that black people get a worse deal than white ones from publicly funded organisations – the NHS, housing and the police included. It’s what makes “institutional racism” a thing. Part of taking institutional racism seriously involves tracking evidence of discrimination back to its root, admitting there’s a problem, and doing something about it.
So, how did councils respond to this fresh evidence that black households were moved out of areas to a disproportionate degree? Their responses ranged from the decisive to the downright defensive.
Birmingham Council admitted it moved black African and Caribbean households outside the city and it knew why: their families were often larger. For this reason, it had spent £60m on bigger homes and commissioned a study of ethnicity and housing.
A similarly decisive response came from Havering Council. Despite disputing the evidence, it made a moral choice to review all its placements to “eliminate all forms of discrimination”.
“How did councils respond to this fresh evidence that black households were moved out of areas to a disproportionate degree? Their responses ranged from the decisive to the downright defensive”
But it was Greenwich Council’s response which really stood out from the others. Its own figures show black households are more likely to be rehoused outside of the area than white ones.
Yet it confidently claimed that it “does not discriminate”. Its justification for this was that its placement policy was “in line with statutory provisions, central government guidelines, and relevant caselaw”.
Now, it might seem unfair to single Greenwich out. A public relations defence for a journalist might not reflect what staff really think. But it speaks volumes about how claims of discrimination are handled.
To say that you “do not discriminate” because you follow laws and guidelines is to miss the point about institutional discrimination completely – for it’s institutional scaffolds, like policies and law, help cause the disparities we see.
This makes ending inequality not just a legal or political endeavour but a moral one too.
Like Birmingham, you might be onto the evidence already, investing in homes to reduce your reliance on out-of-area placements. Or, like Havering, you’re willing to make the moral choice: to dig deeper, despite questioning the evidence.
