Asylum seekers are being prioritised for council housing by the Labour-run council in Edinburgh, leaving locals languishing on the waiting list as the proportion occupied by asylum seekers grows 16-fold in three years. The Telegraph has the story.
Homeless people in Edinburgh who have effectively had their asylum claims approved have been moved to the top of the waiting list for social housing under a policy instituted in April 2025.
Since then, ordinary applicants – those who are not considered disabled, homeless or at risk of violence – have had their requests put on hold so the council can use its housing stock to accommodate the city’s growing homeless population.
Meanwhile, applications for newly arrived asylum seekers who have been granted permission to remain in Britain but are homeless have continued to be processed.
Councillors voted on Tuesday to reinstate the system from before April 2025 and resume giving social housing to the more than 31,000 people frozen on the waiting list. That will take effect in October.
Scotland has a policy to house all homeless people, and many asylum seekers fit into that category once their claim has been approved by the Home Office.
Edinburgh’s homeless population surged by 75% in five years following policy changes that made it one of the most liberal places for housing migrants in Britain.
The council has a waiting list of more than 31,000 applicants for 42,000 homes, which it manages alongside housing associations.
The figures are revealed in an Edinburgh council report that also shows that since 2023, the proportion of the city’s temporary accommodation used to house homeless asylum seekers has increased from around 1% to more than 16%.
The proportion used to accommodate Scottish households has plateaued during this time.
The majority of the city’s temporary accommodation is occupied by people from Edinburgh made homeless by relationship breakdown or loss of tenancy.
Worth reading in full.
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Not in Sandwell Metropolitan Borough. Vote Reform UK 🇬🇧
Do the electors in Edinburgh really approve of this prioritisation? If not, why do they continue to vote for these fools?
Oh well. The Scots are getting what they (stupidly) voted for.
Edinburgh = city of sanctuary…..
Unless you are a native Scot, when:
Edinburgh = city of insecurity
The Nation is LOST. The One World Government people have WON. Hundreds of thousands are simply arriving expecting to be housed and fed and we have this idea it is our obligation to do so.
If this were being perpetrated by the hated sassenachs we’d never hear the last of it…
It would be fitting if the politicians behind these decisions were to be evicted themselves after being kicked out of office by a furious electorate.
It actually feels surreal watching our country being invaded day after day and we are just told to suck it up. The generation before me gave so much for a noble principle now being squandered before our very eyes. How low can these jobsworth politicians sink?
Not much chance of that, they’re all bloody loaded after years of troughing it.
Err hanged actually
Things are hotting up.
Councils normally put people who have intentionally made themselves homeless at the bottom of the waiting list. Anyone who comes to the UK without having a permanent place to live has made themself intentionally homeless, they had a tent or shack on the outskirts of Calais, 3 meals a day from woke NGOs and regular entertainment from clowns what more do they want?
Good point well made.
As for calling them “ asylum seekers “ – this really sticks in my craw. They are economic migrants who are taking advantage of a once – great country that has descended to the depths by prioritising illegal incomers over the natives, who are ignored except when it comes to financing this obscene practice through their taxes. I am sure that very few people would object to paying towards genuine refugees.
Edinburgh, another City of Sanctuary. Offering safety, protection and refuge at the expense of existing citizens. Typical sanctimonious behaviour and empathy bias of the left.
In this matter, Lady Thatcher is vindicated by history, because she insisted to her Cabinet that ONLY BRITISH CITIZENS should be given council housing.
But she was shouted down by the Globalist Traitors in her Cabinet, and we have all seen the result.
Where’s Braveheart when he’s needed by the people of Scotland?
I remember news reports years ago that Scottish National Party Leader Alex Salmond had vehemently denounced his own party faithful, when they protested that Third World Immigrants were being given priority for jobs, welfare and council housing over Indigenous Scots, who were being pushed to the back of the queue.
Salmond forbade them from ever using the term “Indigenous Scots” again. He and his ilk grievously betrayed the Indigenous People of Scotland, trampled beneath the Third World Onslaught, and yet somehow the SNP still blame the English for everything.
Marvellous