Dozens of Somali families have accused their east London council of trying to force them out of the community by overlooking their urgent needs for social housing.
The residents have accused Tower Hamlets Council of racial discrimination and what they describe as “social cleansing” through the housing waiting list.
Their allegations include receiving calls from housing officers to confirm their removal from the list, despite having emergency priority and complex needs, and attending viewings as first-preference residents, only to be told later they were not successful.
With a waiting list of 23,000 households, social housing is limited in Tower Hamlets and the council website warns that “most people who join the housing register will never be offered a social housing tenancy”. But these Somali families say that all too often, they are overlooked for the tenancies that do become available, something they believe is because of “the colour of our skin”.
The allegations come within weeks of a report that said high rates of Covid infections and death in east London’s Somali community were “prolonged due to the legacy of historic poverty, housing density and institutional racism”. The report, published in the Journal of the British Academy, was jointly written by a Somali GP working in east London and a London School of Economics professor.
Sagal said the only alternative is to rent privately but said: “It’s £1,900/2,000 [a month], how can I afford that?”.
The most recent census shows that in 2021 6,180 residents in Tower Hamlets identified as Somali or Somalilander. While 2011 census data didn’t include Somali as an ethnicity, a council report based on the census showed the number of people who identified as Somali or Somalilander was estimated to be 6,000 to 9,000.
Somali families say they’re being forced out of east London community
Dozens of Somali families have accused their east London council of trying to force them out of the community by overlooking their urgent needs for social housing.
