\n<\/p>\n
S<\/span>tuart had no idea the house next door to his had been converted from a three-bedroom family home to a six-bedroom house in multiple occupation (HMO) until he spotted workers installing locks on the living room door.<\/p>\n After contacting the council, Stuart (who did not want to give his last name) and his wife quickly realised there was nothing they could to object to the change, despite sharing an adjoining wall with the property. Six male asylum seekers moved in soon afterwards.<\/p>\n He said: \u201cWe feel a little bit compromised because we\u2019re very much not against the guys that are in there. I don\u2019t blame anybody for trying to get a better life. I think it\u2019s horrific the way they\u2019ve got to do it.<\/p>\n \u201cBut these are family houses and families should be in them. Even if it was six students from Bolton, it\u2019s still not suitable for individual living quarters. There needs to be a grown-up, mature debate about the whole situation and the government needs to get a grip of it. This isn\u2019t the correct way to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n In Horwich, a town on the outskirts of Bolton, frustration over the rise of HMOs has been brewing for some time. The number of HMOs in the north-west city has risen to more than 700 \u2013 or 0.56% of housing stock \u2013 eight times higher than the national average, according to Bolton council.<\/p>\n Last year a group of local residents formed a \u201cSay no to HMOs\u201d campaign group, which successfully lobbied Bolton council to introduce tighter restrictions. This meant properties converted to small HMOs with six or fewer tenants, like the one next door to Stuart, would no longer be exempt from the planning application process.<\/p>\n Stuart said a family had been living next door but had been evicted, before it was sold for about \u00a3150,000 \u2013 cheaper than the average house price on the street \u2013 and converted into a HMO with three extra bedrooms. An estate agent told him his own property would now be worth \u00a330,000-\u00a340,000 less due to having an adjoining HMO, he said.<\/p>\n Further down the street two other properties have also been converted, ready to be turned into HMOs.<\/p>\n <\/span>Reg Parkinson: \u2018It pushes rent prices up but house values down.\u2019<\/span> Photograph: Gary Calton\/The Guardian<\/p>\n A couple of doors away, Reg Parkinson said that after some initial noise issues, he had no problem with the HMO currently housing asylum seekers but he worried about the impact of HMOs on the local housing market.<\/p>\n He said: \u201cLandlords know they can get more income with a HMO, so they get rid of local families and bring people in. It pushes rent prices up but house values down.\u201d<\/p>\n Paul Williamson, a retired street cleaner, was visiting from another part of Bolton, where he said there were similar concerns around HMOs housing asylum seekers.<\/p>\n He said: \u201cThey\u2019ve got to go somewhere, haven\u2019t they? They\u2019re in a position where they can\u2019t do anything else. So what other options have they got? But there are issues. The people next to us won\u2019t speak to us, they don\u2019t want to mix.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>Paul Williamson: \u2018The people next to us won\u2019t speak to us, they don\u2019t want to mix.\u2019<\/span> Photograph: Gary Calton\/The Guardian<\/p>\n One resident around the corner, who asked not be named, said she was worried about the rise of HMOs and their occupants in the area, saying people had felt \u201cscared, ignored and alienated\u201d by the process.<\/p>\n But she was more worried about the potential for the street to be targeted by far-right protesters. \u201cThere is a concern that somebody will discover that we do have asylum seekers living here, and some idiot who\u2019s exceedingly racist will come and put a brick through the window,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cI think there will be more pushback with HMOs than there were with the hotels, because if you put these HMOs in the community unannounced, people are going to be like, what? Hang on. They\u2019ve gone from the hotels to next door to me.\u201d<\/p>\n Stuart agreed that the looming threat of potential far-right protests was a concern. He said: \u201cI\u2019ve seen people online saying, we\u2019ve sorted out the hotels, now we need to target the HMOs. Some have even said, \u2018let\u2019s get some addresses\u2019.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a danger to us all then.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Stuart had no idea the house next door to his had been converted from a three-bedroom family home to a six-bedroom house in multiple occupation (HMO) until he spotted workers installing locks on the living room door. After contacting the council, Stuart (who did not want to give his last name) and his wife quickly<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24417,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[10419,14829,1264,5104,313,13662],"class_list":{"0":"post-24416","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-bolton","9":"tag-hmos","10":"tag-housing","11":"tag-residents","12":"tag-rise","13":"tag-theyve"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24416"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24416\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/24417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}