As tensions have risen around small boat crossings and asylum seekers in the UK, the hotels housing them have become regular targets of attacks by far-right, anti-immigration protesters.

Over the weekend, rioters threw projectiles at hotels and reportedly tried to set fire to one in what the home secretary called an “utterly appalling” attack.

We research the experiences of asylum seekers staying in hotels and other forms of institutional accommodation. In a forthcoming paper, we examine the harassment they face from far-right groups, and the role that political rhetoric plays into the violence and fear that asylum seekers experience.

It is not just threats from outside that affect the people staying temporarily in hotels and other accommodation, such as former army barracks.

The state of accommodation also contributed to physical and mental health problems – from overcrowding, poor hygiene and disease outbreaks, to poor access to food and healthcare. Medical doctors from the charity Doctors of the World found high levels of gastrointestinal problems and suicidal thoughts among asylum seekers living in hotels and former army barracks. Most asylum seekers are, under current rules, unable to work or access education, which can exacerbate these problems.

A lot of the accommodation is also unsuitable for children. As Jenny heard in her work with the independent commission on the integration of refugees, child asylum seekers are often confined to their rooms, lacking spaces to play. And we know that over 100 children are currently missing from asylum hotels.

Women and LGBTQ+ asylum seekers have also reported feeling unsafe.

Asylum seekers and hotels

In March 2024, the Home Office was accommodating over 35,000 people in 267 hotels, down from a peak of 56,000 people in around 400 hotels in September 2023.

Tens of thousands of people are stuck in the UK’s asylum system due to the backlog of applications that has built up over the years. At the end of March 2024, 78,907 asylum seekers had been waiting six months or more for an initial decision. The length of time people remain in asylum housing depends on the time taken to process their claim.

There are four options for accommodation: living with a friend, relative or other host; hotel accommodation; another form of institutional housing or dispersal to shared private sector accommodation in the community.

Many do not have access to the first option, which has the lowest costs because hosts do not receive any payment for providing accommodation.

Asylum seekers have no choice about which of the other three options they are allocated. Community housing – often shared flats or houses managed by accommodation providers – is in short supply. Although, it is far cheaper than hotels and other institutional housing, such as the Bibby Stockholm barge.

The recent news that the Bibby Stockholm will be decommissioned from 2025 was welcomed by asylum seekers and many who work with them. The unsuitability of the barge for housing asylum seekers, as well as the huge costs, makes closing it the only obvious choice. Yet the barge only housed just over 300 people. Those leaving the Bibby Stockholm without a decision on their claim are now likely to be accommodated in hotels or other institutional housing.

Hotel costs have fluctuated, from £134 per person per night in April 2023 to £148 in January 2024. The Home Office has attempted to reduce the number and cost of hotels by requiring up to four people to share rooms. Had the government renewed the £20 million contract for the Bibby Stockholm this would have equated to £170 per person per night.

Despite the poor conditions, the small number of private sector companies awarded government contracts to run this accommodation have enjoyed record profits. Earlier in 2024, the founder of one of the major asylum accommodation contract holders entered the Sunday Times rich list with a net worth of £750 million.

Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, described the current accommodation situation as like Hotel California. The Conservative government’s Illegal Migration Act meant that asylum seekers who arrived in the UK after March 2023 could not have their cases processed, nor be sent elsewhere due to delays in the Rwanda plan. As a result, many have been stuck in hotels for many months.

Cost-effective, humane alternatives

There will always be a need for some asylum housing. But the fastest way to close hotels that are easy targets for the far right is to fast-track asylum decisions, prioritising those from countries where asylum claims are most frequently successful.

The commission on the integration of refugees also recommends moving away from the reliance on the private sector, instead putting regional and local authorities in charge of providing housing for asylum seekers. These should be funded by multiyear government settlements rather than the current short-term contracts.

Under this system, the profits that currently go into the private sector could be invested back into communities to pay for services, such as employment support, that all those in need could use.

As the backlog reduces, freed-up accommodation could be used to house other vulnerable populations in the same way that hotels were used in the pandemic to house rough sleepers.

The government might also consider adopting a similar approach to the Homes for Ukraine Scheme and paying people with spare rooms to house asylum seekers, subject to the appropriate safeguards. Both these options offer the prospect of a more humane approach at far lower costs than the current model.

Jenny Phillimore is Director of the Institute for Research into Superdiversity (IRiS), University of Birmingham.

Olivia Petie is PhD candidate, University of Birmingham.

This article was first published on The Conversation.