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 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.
He said: “We feel a little bit compromised because we’re very much not against the guys that are in there. I don’t blame anybody for trying to get a better life. I think it’s horrific the way they’ve got to do it.
“But these are family houses and families should be in them. Even if it was six students from Bolton, it’s 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’t the correct way to do it.”
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 – or 0.56% of housing stock – eight times higher than the national average, according to Bolton council.
Last year a group of local residents formed a “Say no to HMOs” 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.
Stuart said a family had been living next door but had been evicted, before it was sold for about £150,000 – cheaper than the average house price on the street – and converted into a HMO with three extra bedrooms. An estate agent told him his own property would now be worth £30,000-£40,000 less due to having an adjoining HMO, he said.
Further down the street two other properties have also been converted, ready to be turned into HMOs.
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.
He said: “Landlords 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.”
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.
He said: “They’ve got to go somewhere, haven’t they? They’re in a position where they can’t do anything else. So what other options have they got? But there are issues. The people next to us won’t speak to us, they don’t want to mix.”
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 “scared, ignored and alienated” by the process.
But she was more worried about the potential for the street to be targeted by far-right protesters. “There is a concern that somebody will discover that we do have asylum seekers living here, and some idiot who’s exceedingly racist will come and put a brick through the window,” she said.
“I 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’ve gone from the hotels to next door to me.”
Stuart agreed that the looming threat of potential far-right protests was a concern. He said: “I’ve seen people online saying, we’ve sorted out the hotels, now we need to target the HMOs. Some have even said, ‘let’s get some addresses’.
“There’s a danger to us all then.”
