Immigrant's access to social housing: perception and reality

Although most UK immigrants are likely to be eligible to apply for social housing, there is no evidence that they have preferential access - if anything the reverse seems to have been the case. But it does seem that there is less discrimination against immigrants and ethnic minorities now than in the past and this removal of discrimination, coupled with a failure to increase the social housing stock, has reduced the availability of social housing for UK native households. According to research by Professor Alan Manning, this is probably the source of the feeling among some white people that social landlords actively discriminate against them in favour of immigrants and ethnic minorities. They are probably right to think that the part of the population attracted to social housing has been neglected, but they are wrong to think that this neglect applies just to them and not to immigrants as well.