Britons shelter homeless refugees in their spare rooms

Lin Taylor -

When Eritrean refugee Hermon gave birth to her daughter Ruftana in February, her joy quickly turned into fear as she and her husband Yonathan grappled with the reality of raising their first child while homeless in London.

Although Hermon and Yonathan were given refugee status in 2015, being unable to find work, they could not afford to rent and shared a cramped one-bedroom flat with Hermon’s sister and her two children in south London.

A caseworker introduced 32-year-old Yonathan to Rachel Mantell, who lived in nearby Brixton and offered them a spare room through Refugees at Home, a charity she helps run that matches homeless refugees with volunteer hosts across Britain. Tough asylum procedures, limited job opportunities and a shortage of homes in Britain have pushed thousands of refugees and asylum seekers into homelessness.

“If we didn’t find Rachel, if we didn’t meet her, we could have ended up sleeping on the streets,” said Hermon. At least 250,000 people are estimated to be homeless across England, housing charity Shelter said last December, because of a lack of affordable homes.

Mantell said her charity has offered spare rooms to migrants sleeping rough in parks, on couches of friends or relatives, and even on night buses, travelling from one end of the route to the other.

“Letting people be somewhere safe ... is a really valuable thing at that urgent time of their life,” said Mantell, who has hosted Yonathan, Hermon and Ruftana for nearly four months.

Refugees At Home said it has provided 29,300 hosted nights to hundreds of people since it started in October 2015.

London-based charity Housing Justice said people waiting for asylum, or those appealing their rejected claims, were most at risk of homelessness and destitution since they are not entitled to regular welfare benefits nor are they allowed to work.

“These people have nowhere else to go, (there’s) no provision for them,” said Jacob Quagliozzi, deputy director of Housing Justice which runs night shelters for the homeless, and also offers spare rooms to refugees in London. For Yonathan and Hermon, the pressure to find a home for their growing infant looms large. As Yonathan spends his days looking for work, Hermon waits by the phone to see if they are eligible for a council house in the northwestern city of Manchester, their second choice. But if all else fails, they have the Mantell family as a lifeline. — Thomson Reuters Foundation