By Lara Oyedele,
CEO, Black on Board Ltd and
past President, Chartered Institute of Housing

Nigel Farage’s recent proposal to evict foreign nationals from social housing isn’t a serious housing policy. It’s a political dog whistle built on racism, xenophobia and the politics of division. It’s designed to provoke, divide and dominate the news agenda. On that measure, it’s succeeded spectacularly.

I simply don’t believe the Reform UK leader is unaware of how social housing allocations work. He has access to advisers, researchers, lawyers and housing experts. He knows access to social housing is tightly controlled by legislation. He knows many people with insecure immigration status are already excluded. He knows housing associations cannot simply choose who they house. He knows removing existing tenants would require parliament to change the law and would almost certainly face significant legal challenge. The technical arguments explaining why his proposal wouldn’t work have already been well rehearsed elsewhere.

More importantly, Farage knows evicting foreign nationals won’t solve Britain’s housing crisis. It’d create a much larger homelessness crisis, place enormous pressure on local authorities, create chaos for social landlords and leave families facing uncertainty and distress.

So, why say it?

Because this was never really about housing.

It’s about creating an enemy. It’s about encouraging people to look sideways at their neighbours instead of upwards at decades of political failure to build enough genuinely affordable homes. It’s about feeding resentment, attracting attention and keeping us arguing about immigration instead of housing supply.

The housing crisis wasn’t caused by the Ghanaian nurse, the Polish engineer or the Indian doctor living next door. It was caused by successive governments failing to build enough homes. But why let the truth get in the way of rabble rousing?

“The housing crisis wasn’t caused by the Ghanaian nurse, the Polish engineer or the Indian doctor living next door. It was caused by successive governments failing to build enough homes”

What frightens me isn’t simply the political statement. It’s what happens next. The words of political leaders’ matter. When senior politicians repeatedly suggest that foreign nationals are taking homes that should belong to someone else, some people will inevitably conclude that the law is moving too slowly and decide to take it into their own hands.

We’ve already seen what happens when inflammatory rhetoric collides with prejudice. Only recently, racist attacks in Northern Ireland saw Black families targeted, with homes vandalised and burned. Two years ago, violent mobs attacked accommodation housing people seeking asylum. Those responsible didn’t stop to ask, or care, whether the people inside were refugees, British citizens, nurses, students or taxpayers. They didn’t ask to see passports or check immigration status. They simply decided that anyone who looked or sounded different didn’t belong.

That’s why this scares me.

As a Black British woman, I know that those intent on hatred don’t distinguish between a migrant and a British citizen. They don’t know whether I was born in London, Lisbon or Lagos. They see skin colour, a headscarf, an accent or a foreign sounding surname. For some, that’s enough.

Perhaps most worrying is the normalisation of racist rhetoric. It begins as supposedly respectable political debate. It ends with some people feeling entitled to dispense their own version of justice against anyone they perceive to be foreign.

The housing sector also has a responsibility. Our professional bodies should be brave enough to stand up to Nigel Farage and call this what it is: a racist dog whistle. We cannot hide behind technical explanations while ignoring the damage this rhetoric does to communities. Those communities include our tenants, residents, colleagues, board members, contractors and consultants.

Nigel Farage has succeeded in setting the agenda once again. Don’t mistake this for a genuine proposal to solve the housing crisis. Britain’s housing crisis won’t be solved by scapegoating migrants. It’ll be solved by building more genuinely affordable homes and finding effective solutions to the homelessness emergency.

Everything else is little more than a distraction.