Britain’s housing market is a mess. The system yields arbitrary gains for some, locks out others, puts pressure on (especially) young people’s real incomes due to high rental and mortgage costs and constrains economic growth by impeding labour mobility.
Reform UK has a housing plan for England: not to address the problem, but to foment social division by making life harder for people born overseas. To state it this way invites the accusation that I’m caricaturing the party’s policy. But it’s accurate. Reform intends to punish people for an accident of birth. This would be iniquitous even if it addressed the housing crisis. It does no such thing.
Reform pledges to bar foreign nationals from social housing. It announced today that it would also give priority in social housing to British citizens born in this country and to young married couples with children.
In short, if you’re a British citizen who’s been a resident in this country for decades, Reform will discriminate against you in allocating social housing if you were born in another country. It will do this too if you’re a Commonwealth citizen who arrived in Britain under an immigration regime that gave you the same rights as British citizens.
