That's a
very tenuous connection. Firstly. While it's true that many homeless are migrants, it's also true that many are British. I haven't been able to track down any firm statistics on homeless by nationality, but I've also not been able to find any indication that the majority of homeless are not British, so it seems most plausible that migrants make up a significant minority of homeless people.
Further, many migrants are not entitled to local authority support - which of course is one of the reasons why many migrants become and remain homeless. I don't know the precise situation in Peterborough, but since it's a local authority doing the housing, they are clearly only likely to housing those who are eligible for local authority support - which would tend for the most part to imply British citizens or people who are permanently resident here. It therefore seems very likely, based on what little I can find out, that most of those being housed would be British people. You suggest some bias by the Mirror, but I've also found several other reports about the incident in various different online sources - including the
original petition on the issue. None that I've found mention anything whatsoever about migrants. Given that immigration is such hot political subject, you'd have thought that
if the council was primarily housing migrants, someone (such as the Mail or the Express
) would be kicking up a big fuss about that, but no one appears to be doing so.
So - although I can't find out any definite facts about it - it certainly looks very
probable that you're looking for migrant connections where there isn't really anything of substance. (Although I do think kicking existing tenants out is a pretty appalling thing to do, no matter what the intentions are).
