Black people in England are almost four times as likely to face homelessness as White people and substantially less likely to get social housing, according to the first major study into homelessness and racism in more than two decades.

A three-year research project by academics at Heriot-Watt University found that ethnicity affects a person’s risk of homelessness, even when controlling for factors such as geography, poverty, and home ownership rates.

They recorded evidence of people resorting to changing their name, accent, and hairstyle to try to gain access to housing and other services, and being told by housing officers to be grateful because “you don’t have this back in your country.”

The report’s lead author, Prof. Suzanne Fitzpatrick, said: “There are long-term forms of structural disadvantage, rooted in historic racism, which are impacting on risks of homelessness. But the data indicates present-day discrimination is also playing a role.” 

“We heard reports of really overt racism from private landlords – refusing to house people because they’re Black, particularly if they’re refugees, or imposing rules or restrictions on them that they don’t impose on other tenants.”

The team from the university’s Institute for Social Policy, Housing and Equalities Research analysed 750,000 household outcome records from official homelessness data from 2019-20 to 2021-22 and found that 10% of Black families in the statutory homelessness system gained access to social housing, compared with 24% of White families.