BME London Landlords collaboration have reaffirmed a commitment to do more to utilise their position as registered social landlords to support London local authorities and the Greater London Authority with their plans for a post pandemic lockdown recovery.
The collaborative group have been meeting in July to come up with a strategy of how best to use their organisations assets and resources to be of service to their residents and wider BME community stakeholders at this seminal time, where Londoners are now negotiating their way towards a new future.
Speculation about a 2nd wave of the coronavirus in the winter, and the implications of the downturn in the economy having the potential to hit London’s BME communities the hardest; members of BME London Landlords are reaching out to Cabinet members of London local authorities to explore how they can work in partnership to address the concerns around health, housing, education, employment.
Engaging local politicians, the Greater London Authority, and seeking to work with others in the housing sector is part of BME London Landlords’ wider strategy to seek to influence decision-makers to focus on addressing disparities that disproportionately face those from BME communities who make up 49% of London’s demographic. Detailed analysis of the data highlights an acute over-representation of people from BME backgrounds as homeless, living overcrowded conditions, more likely to have lower-paid jobs, suffer from poverty, be more at risk to certain health conditions.
The recent Public Health England report into the impact of COVID 19 linked poverty and quality of housing as underlying causes of the disproportionality of BME deaths as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. The UK government’s race disparity unit‘s website ethnicity facts and figures clearly illustrate in numbers the stark reality of how people from BME communities compare to their white counterparts in terms of quality of life, health, wellbeing, pay, employment, being subject to the criminal justice system. BME London members, as community-facing, registered social landlords since their inception, have been working towards meeting the needs of BME communities with social housing from a culturally unique standpoint. Now as we enter the post-pandemic reality, with the mandate to shape a more just society BME London are renewing their commitment to work with others to find the best ways to approach the real challenges that face BME communities in London.
