How we can help Syrian refugees: compassionate Londoners offering asylum seekers food, shelter and spare rooms

As leaders struggle to react to the migrant crisis, Londoners are offering food, shelter and spare rooms to help desperate asylum seekers. Rosamund Urwin on how our compassion is being harnessed 
Far from home: Syrian refugees at Keleti railway station in Budapest
AP Photo/Petr David Josek
Rosamund Urwin4 September 2015

"What can we do?” went the cry this week. It was usually uttered in despair, by someone who’d seen — or couldn’t bear to see — the tiny body of Aylan Kurdi washed up on Bodrum beach in Turkey. The Syrian toddler is one of more than 2,600 refugees who have drowned trying to cross the Mediterranean since January. He died alongside his mother, Rehan, and five year-old brother, Galip.

Even 1,700 miles away in London, we are not completely impotent, though. It is estimated that some 4.5 million people have fled Syria so far, and this week the political clamour has been growing for Britain to open its doors to more of them. Last night, David Cameron bowed to public anger, saying the UK would accept its “moral obligations”, and take in thousands more.

Germany expects around 120,000 Syrians to have sought refuge within its borders by the end of this year, but just 5,569 Syrians have claimed asylum in the UK from the start of 2012 to the end of June. A further 216 refugees have been resettled under Britain’s “vulnerable persons relocation scheme”, a number that could comfortably be seated inside a single Tube train.

Tragedy: a police officer carries the body of Aylan Kurdi off a Turkish beach
Nilufer Demir/Dogan News Agency/AP

One of the apparent barriers to the UK receiving more refugees is a lack of housing. Which is why novel solutions are being proposed to address this. One such is being espoused by Finchley Progressive Synagogue, which is working with community organisers Citizens UK. Together, they are trying to find private landlords in Barnet to house refugees. The aim is to find accommodation for 50 Syrians in order to persuade the local council to accept them.

“Around the [75th] anniversary of Kindertransport, lots of us went to Liverpool Street station to mark it,” says Rebecca Birk, a rabbi at the synagogue. “Many of my members owe the survival of relatives to the kindness of people in offering them shelter. We felt it was a Jewish imperative to work with this country, which has been fantastic in the past in recognising the benefits of opening its doors, to help them.”

They want to house some of the most vulnerable refugees: the young, and those who have suffered sexual assault or torture.

A team of 20 has spent the summer searching for school places, doctors and — most importantly — places for refugees to live. “Our synagogue is trying to remove the responsibility of Barnet to find the housing — it isn’t going to be a burden on their resources,” Birk explains. “That’s why it comes through a private route. It won’t displace British people queuing for housing here. We’re not suggesting they be put on the housing register; we are alive to the sensitivity of that as an issue.”

She met last week with Richard Cornelius, head of Barnet council, to discuss how this could theoretically work.

It isn’t about asking landlords to donate the housing for free. The first 12 months will be paid for by the European Union under a scheme for placing vulnerable refugees. “We’re not asking for charitable homes, we are asking that people who would be renting out a property anyway will consider this scheme, and take a year out of their private rentals and be paid by the EU instead.”

Protest: Asylum seekers after being evicted from the station 
Bjorn Kietzmann/Demotix/Corbis

So far, three landlords have been willing to sign up, and Birk is confident of getting more.

“I feel more and more positive,” she says. “Kingston council have already given the go-ahead. Once the boroughs have agreed, I think it is a matter of red tape for the Home Office.”

Birk adds that she sees this as her religious duty: “The Jewish imperative is very clear: it is about extending the hand, loving the stranger, always with the reinforcement that we know what it is like to be strangers. The Jewish identity is predicated on being a foreigner, relying on the kindness of strangers, it runs through our own theology really: doing good, mending the world. We talk of three pillars the world stands on — the Torah, divine service, and kind acts. It’s an anathema to be a Jew and only be concerned with oneself.”

She says the scheme is following UN guidance that people should not simply offer up a spare room; these must be properties with their own front door. Obviously, they must also be clean and safe.

The synagogue’s efforts are part of a broader movement hoping to help house Syrian refugees here. Kingston Council has been leading the way on this. The Conservative council leader, Kevin Davis, has proposed that councils put up Syrian refugees for a year in their towns and villages.

Davis was responding to requests from faith organisations to do more to take refugees. Earlier this year, he wrote to other council leaders, wanting to commit his council to housing 50 families, and asking if everyone else would do the same. The religious groups have also then written to their members, to see if they can find places to stay. Kingston says it is currently in the process of looking at the properties it has been offered.

Of course, not many of us have extra homes just lying around. Perhaps here we could take a lesson from Germany, where the “separate entrance” guidelines are being ignored. Martin Patzelt, an MP from Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) party, temporarily housed two Eritrean refugees in his Brandenburg home, helping them to find work locally.

But there is a wider movement too. A group called Flüchtlinge Willkommen (“Refugees Welcome”) has been dubbed “Airbnb for refugees” (refugees-welcome.net). It pairs up citizens who are happy to share their flats with refugees; more than 780 Germans have already signed up to help.

Migrants crowd a track at Keleti Railway Station in Budapest
Herbert P. Oczeret/EPA

Costs are covered by donations to the site, as well as job centre or welfare payments. The organisation is currently trying to expand into other countries including the UK.

“There have been people starting to get together and brainstorm,” says a Flüchtlinge Willkommen spokeswoman. “But at this point it is not clear yet if they will be an official branch of “Flüchtlinge Willkommen” [in the UK].”

She is currently wading through over 500 emails from people all over the UK, the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, offering help, spare rooms or wanting to start their own initiatives.

They are not the only people trying to alleviate this humanitarian crisis. A petition to the Government to take more refugees and increase support for them has been signed by more than 340,000 people, meaning it must be considered for a parliamentary debate. And so far more than 67,000 people have signed up to attend a September 12 rally, marching from Marble Arch to Downing Street in support of refugees.

Soho pub the Coach & Horses is crowdfunding a meal to take to refugees in Calais; TV presenter Dawn O’Porter has set up an Amazon wish list for the refugees so they have enough tents, pants and T-shirts; even Toby Young is campaigning for the UK to take more children. Meanwhile, the young adult novelist Patrick Ness has raised over £150,000 for Save the Children. He had pledged to match the first £10,000 himself and fellow authors John Green, Jojo Moyes and Derek Landy then followed suit.

As these people prove, “What can we do?” needn’t be just a rhetorical question.

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