Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Fancy Hosting a Refugee?
As the number of refugees and asylum seekers, grows, the absence of sufficient government help is seeing a corresponding growth in the number of schemes to broker temporary homes with ordinary people.
It's a noble and apparently rewarding gesture to offer a refugee a home whilst they find their feet and there are a number of well-founded schemes that people can sign up to. Two such schemes are:
- Room for Refugees - pioneered by Positive Action in Housing in 2004, Room for Refugees is the oldest refugee hosting scheme run by a registered charity in the UK or Western Europe.
- London Hosting is a network of individuals, community groups and organisations providing spare rooms and temporary homes for men, women and children who have been excluded from public funds. It also works hard to develop more hosting capacity across London because many more people need your help.
There is apparently a huge demand for hosts in London and the groups would love to hear from anyone interested.
If you're intrigued or are on the fence and would like to find out more, you could probably do worse than going to an open evening being hosted in East London by London Hosting:
In response to current interest in helping migrants and refugees arriving in Europe and the UK London Hosting invites you to an Open Evening. Come and find out more about this practical response to need.
Many migrants and refugees find themselves, through no fault of their own, with no support or accommodation and no help to return to their home country. Local authorities and most homeless charities don’t provide accommodation because they have no entitlements to benefits, or “no recourse to public funds”. Many have been in the UK a long while, and they come from a wide range of countries, including especially Iran and Eritrea. Volunteers from Churches, faith and community groups are responding, offering temporary hospitality to people in their homes, while their asylum or immigration case is reviewed.
Do you have a spare room or space to offer, even temporarily? Come along to this find out more: What is needed? What support is offered? What if something goes wrong? How long might someone need a room?
Come and hear from people who are hosting, and people being hosted.
Full details here.
Finally a word of warning. According to Positive Action in Housing, it appears that there are some less than scrupulous organisations out there who are taking advantage of the crisis and housing refugees in awful conditions. Before you join a hosting scheme, it's worth just credentialing the organisation that runs it.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Con on
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Hi Hugh
Thanks for posting this. I have experience of both projects and they are well run. There is now a great network of people hosting forced migrants in Haringey and several projects where people receive practical and emotional support.
Con
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Hi Eugene
Yes, Philip Foxe will get on to you about your offer. Apologies for not replying to this before. Thanks
Con
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Hi
I'm part of a very scrupulous group also arranging hosting altruistically in London, the South East and across the country... Bristol seems to need a fair bit and we have hosted in Solihull and East Anglia too.
Refugees At Home is looking for hosts and Home Visitors in the Haringey/Tottenham area because there are so many potential guests around this patch.
Do email info@refugeesathome.org if you would like more information or an application form. We respond very quickly.
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Yes of course. When we started, we were offered pro bono legal advice by Travers Smith - a very good city law firm. They suggested we should incorporate as a company initially and then work towards charitable status. So that's what we did. Because everyone works for free whether In Admin, as hosts or as home visitors, we haven't needed money or focused on fund-raising. When we do, the lawyers will advise us on applying for charitable status.
I hope that allays any concerns you may have.
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Permalink Reply by Hugh on
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Thanks. Was there any particular reason you chose to set up a new organisation rather than support the existing ones?
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When my brother wanted to start hosting last summer, we checked out how to do it in London and the Home counties (he lives in Surrey). No-one got back to him, there seemed to be virtually nothing happening. He signed up with Spare-Room, the delightful group of mostly Quakers, we went to a London Hosting meeting. Praxis/London Hosting were not functioning much at the time - I'm not sure quite why. Maybe things are better now.
So we decided to set up a responsive group who would try and combine the use of IT, social media and face-to-face work to enable efficient and effective matching between asylum-seekers/refugees and generous hosts.
Got that all sorted, governance and procedures agreed, pro-formas and communications written and piloted and only then heard about PAIH. But their modus operandi is really quite different from ours and the refugee hosting is part of a bigger and more political plan. We are not lobbyists and are focused wholly on the one task. So we thought being subsumed into the Glasgow-based PAIH didn't make sense for us.
There's masses of work to do, potential guests to help, and different ways to do it.
We have a steady flow of volunteer hosts, a slightly slower one of potential home visitors and are focusing on Haringey/Tottenham only because we have had several referrals of guests from the patch and would like to be able to place them locally, if at all possible.
Is there anything else you would like to know?
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No that's great. I'd read about the a use of the situation by some unscrupulous individuals, so I wanted to ask a few questions of you. I appreciate you forebearance and openness and wish you every success.
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Certainly not unscrupulous - in fact really quite respectable what with the brother being a JP and me a quango queen with an OBE for fairness!
But they are all good questions and it is helpful to have to think them through and respond to challenge.
Actually, I would go for charitable status right now - you can get on track with £5,000 which I don't think would be an insuperable problem. But my brother and some of the others in the group think the requirements are too onerous if we don't yet really need to fund-raise. I think the respectability is worth it, but we have agreed to re-open the subject in six months' time. Shame in a way as several of us already have experience as charitable trustees.
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