Why we still need a BME housing sector

Tony Soares writes for The Guardian about the need for black and minority ethnic (BME) housing to a crucial role in supporting BME communities.

Black and minority ethnic housing associations were set up in the late 1970s and 1980s in response to a growing housing crisis across the UK. They flourished under the first two BME housing strategies promoted by the Housing Corporation, but by the 2000s they began to fade. One after another they merged willingly or were forced into larger mainstream associations, abandoning entirely their identities as BME organisations.

Only a handful remain as independent associations and most of them are very small, miniscule compared to the big boys of social housing, a sector which has grown rapidly under both Conservative and Labour governments as council housing was replaced.

Do we still need them? More than ever, but only if they can revert to the roles they assumed when they were first set up: a tradition of self help among new immigrant communities, which brought about benefits from community centres to credit unions.

Read the full article over at The Guardian website.