Our pledge to migrant people

14/11/2017

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Migration Work organised the first Migrants’ Access to Housing Conference in June 2017, commissioned by Arhag and Innisfree Housing Associations, and Praxis Community Projects.

The conference was a space to explore the ways housing associations can support migrants in the difficult current political and economic climate.

A way of making this change is by telling our positive stories, promoting awareness and training our employees. 

A number of housing associations, including us, signed up to the “Housing Associations' Pledge to Migrant People.” Our three commitments are:

  1. To promote a welcoming environment for migrants, by improving staff confidence to search for advice services and useful signposting information for people on an individual basis.
  2. To brief staff and board members that cover the current experience of migrants by focusing on our own residents’ stories. We’ll also introduce our staff and board members to the Housing Rights website: http://www.housing-rights.info/index.php
  3. To build relationships with more organisations that work with migrant people and explore partnership working.

We are proud to be a part of this and currently have partnerships in Camden with Migrant support organisations such as Hopscotch who support the Asian community. Their work in and around Camden encourages people to participate in the community. We also work with legal advice agencies such as Citizens Advice Bureau and rent our community spaces to migrant groups such as the Bengali Women’s group.

We’re actively looking for new partnerships with migrant community groups.

For more information about the conference, visit Migration Work’s website http://www.migrationwork.org/news/changing-the-narrative-migrants-access-to-housing