‘We are dying little by little here’: asylum seekers at mercy of Home Office hotel closures

Huda’s 12-year-old daughter, who uses a wheelchair and has epilepsy and a heart condition, is sleeping on the floor. Photograph: supplied View image in fullscreen Huda’s 12-year-old daughter, who uses a wheelchair and has epilepsy and a heart condition, is sleeping on the floor. Photograph: supplied ‘We are dying little by little here’: asylum seekers at mercy of Home Office hotel closures Legal challenges launched over accommodation ‘adequacy’ as UK government closes more asylum hotels Huda and her two children aged 10 and 12 had been living in two rooms in a London hotel for six months when they were told with just a few days’ notice they would be moved. The 41-year-old engineering graduate from Tunisia fled death threats from extended family and is waiting for an asylum application to be processed. The Home Office had decided that Staycity, the hotel the family was staying in, would be closed as part of a government pledge that asylum seekers would be moved out of hotels and into military barracks or other forms of shared housing. The move followed protests by anti-migrant activists, with many arguing hotels were too luxurious to accommodate asylum seekers. On 25 June, the Home Office announced the closure of 20 hotels, following a previous announcement that closed 11 earlier this year. When asylum hotels are closed, people are either moved to other hotels where there is space, sent to military barracks or granted asylum. Now legal challenges have been launched on behalf of some at the hotel due to concerns about the government’s failure to assess individual vulnerabilities before the mass evictions. A court order from John Halford, sitting as a deputy high court judge, states that it is “arguable” the home secretary failed to consider the “adequacy” of the accommodation asylum seekers were being moved to from Staycity. Huda’s 12-year-old daughter uses a wheelchair and has epilepsy and a heart condition. “I have so many different medical supplies just to keep my daughter alive that they take up almost one room on their own,” said Huda. The family sat in reception waiting for transport to their new hotel from 10am until 7pm. “The new hotel is much worse,” said Huda. “My children and I are dying little by little here. My daughter is sleeping on the floor because she is scared of the bunk bed. The new place is so cramped and there is nowhere to cook for my children.” View image in fullscreen ‘The new place is so cramped and there is nowhere to cook for my children,’ said Huda, whose family were moved at short notice. Ralitsa Peykova, a solicitor at Deighton Pierce Glynn, the firm mounting challenges against the expedited evictions, said the government’s hotel closures had been complete chaos and a waste of taxpayers’ money. “We have had to issue urgent legal proceedings because our clients are being moved from one hotel to another without any evaluative assessment of their needs,” she said. Chloe White, the executive director of Action for Refuge