FrameWorks UK shares their new research into how people think about homes and immigration, and how communicators can move the debate away from blame and towards solutions.
As housing debates become tangled up with immigration, new research from FrameWorks UK shows how communicators can move the conversation away from blame and towards solutions.
Across the UK, the housing crisis is shaping people’s lives in increasingly urgent ways. Too many people are struggling to find a safe, decent and affordable home, while organisations working across housing, poverty and financial wellbeing are calling for long-term change.
For those on the frontline, the challenge is not only practical. It is also communicative. How do we talk about housing in a way that builds support for solutions, rather than deepening division? And how do we respond when public conversations about housing become tangled up with wider debates about immigration?
FrameWorks UK, a not-for-profit communications research organisation, has been exploring these questions through its Talking about Homes project, alongside Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the Nationwide Foundation.
We spoke to Sophie Gordon, Principal Communications Strategist at FrameWorks UK, about what the research uncovered about how people think about homes and immigration, and what kinds of messages can help keep the conversation focused on improving the housing system.
A new challenge for housing communicators
“Talking about Homes was set up to change the conversation about housing in the UK and build support for changes such as building more social homes, reforming private renting and improving the quality of homes.”
But in recent years, housing communicators have found themselves facing a new challenge.
“Many communicators in the housing sector — from people working in campaigning and advocacy organisations to people working in housing provision — identified an increase in discourse linking immigration to pressure on the UK’s housing system,” Sophie explains. “They told us that this was distracting attention from their calls to improve housing.”
In this context, last year FrameWorks UK undertook qualitative research to address these concerns and find communications strategies to help focus the conversation on improving our housing systems.
The mindsets shaping the debate
The research found that two mindsets dominate public thinking about homes and immigration: Scarcity and Fatalism.
Scarcity is the assumption that there are not enough resources to meet demand. People may see public systems as overburdened and under pressure, and assume that when it comes to housing, there are simply not enough homes for those who need them. More specifically, Sophie explains, people often assume there are not enough affordable homes to meet demand.
This is a challenge because Scarcity does not explain how housing scarcity happens, or who is responsible for it.
“When asked about housing problems, for example, research participants drawing on a Scarcity mindset assumed a fixed and finite supply of affordable homes — and so directed their attention to increased demand as the problem,” Sophie says.
Fatalism is closely related. It is the assumption that the problems in the housing system are too big and too complex to solve. In this mindset, people may conclude that there will never be enough decent, affordable housing for everyone, or certainly not in their own lifetime.
For communicators, this can be just as difficult.
“Reasoning with this mindset makes it easier for people to dismiss policies to increase the supply of decent and affordable homes as unworkable or as action that won’t be followed through,” Sophie explains. “And it directs attention away from what could be done within the housing system — and instead, towards lessening demand.”
Together, Scarcity and Fatalism can narrow the conversation. Instead of encouraging people to ask what needs to change in the housing system, they can push people towards questions about who is using limited resources, who should get priority, and whether meaningful change is possible at all.
Why facts alone do not shift the conversation
Understanding these mindsets matters because it changes how organisations respond. When people are reasoning through Scarcity or Fatalism, simply giving them more facts is unlikely to move the conversation on its own.
Organisations may feel pressure to respond directly with facts, figures or myth-busting. But this can have the opposite effect.
“Many studies have shown that myth-busting — repeating misinformation or disinformation in order to rebut it — often backfires,” Sophie says. “It doesn’t tend to shift people’s thinking, and can inadvertently reinforce false information, as repeating the message gives it more airtime.”
The task, then, is not only to challenge misinformation. It is to offer people a different way of understanding the issue.“We can’t fight misinformation with facts alone — we need to use those facts to tell a story,” Sophie says.
Why collective benefit offers a stronger frame
One of the strongest strategies tested in the research was to talk about the collective benefits of decent, affordable homes. Rather than framing housing as something different groups are competing for, this approach helps people think about what becomes possible when everyone has access to a decent home.
“People recognise that when all of us live in decent affordable homes, this contributes to a thriving, prosperous society,” Sophie says.
That framing works because it avoids reinforcing the Scarcity mindset, Sophie explains. Instead of encouraging people to think about a fixed supply of homes and who should get priority, it focuses attention on the need to increase the supply of decent, affordable homes for everyone.
It can also help push back against Fatalism. If decent homes are understood as part of the foundation for a thriving society, improving the housing system becomes a shared public priority, rather than an impossible problem or a competition between groups.
There is another important shift here too. Talking about homes as something people need in order to contribute to their community and wider society helps expand public thinking. Rather than starting from the idea that people need to contribute before they receive support, it opens up a different question: what do people need in order to contribute in the first place?
For Sophie, this is where the power of the message lies. A decent, affordable home is not just an outcome of stability. It is one of the foundations that makes stability possible.
Does the messenger matter?
At a time when influential public figures can use their platforms to spread misinformation or encourage division, communicators may feel that their own voices are unlikely to cut through. And with people’s trust in institutions and services diminishing, it can be unclear to what extent the messenger itself matters.
While Sophie says further research to understand who the most trusted messengers on this topic might be could be important, she believes there is a broader point to focus on.
“It takes a whole chorus of voices to shift the conversation — not just a few,” she says. “So the more people who can use the insights and recommendations from our research to inform their own communications, the better.”
That matters for professionals who may not see themselves as public communicators. Housing providers, charities, local authorities, frontline advisers and campaigners all have a part to play — not only in public messaging, but in everyday conversations with residents, clients, colleagues, partners and policymakers.
“While opinions differ on these issues, mindsets are shared. So my advice would be to remember that, even when we feel divided, we do still have more in common with each other.”
The work is not about finding the perfect spokesperson or winning every argument. It is about building a wider, more constructive conversation: one that starts from shared ways of thinking, finds common ground, explains how problems have been created, and points towards solutions that would make life better.
You can read the full report here.
Image: Tartezy/Canva