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Regional secretary with the National Education Union
Refugees fight enforced homelessness
The Home Office has met resistance in its efforts to resume evictions of refused asylum-seekers, reports RUTH HUNT

DURING the early days of the pandemic in March 2020, the Home Office suspended evictions of destitute refused asylum-seekers in line with the urgent direction to local authority’s homelessness services to bring “everyone in.”

But only six months later in September 2020, during the “second wave” of Covid-19, the Home Office announced its plan to restart evictions of those asylum-seekers whose applications have been denied and who don’t agree to leave.

Charities and human rights campaigners condemned the decision as inhumane and warned it could result in rough sleeping and sofa surfing and, as a consequence, a rise in coronavirus cases.

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