Fact check Foreign-born people, not necessarily foreigners, occupy 48% of London’s social housing

Key context is missing from a widely shared online claim about the proportion of social housing that foreigners occupy in Britain’s capital London.

One post on X, which received more than 1.9 million views, said: “48% of London’s social housing is occupied by people who are foreign.”

Published on March 11, it included a heat map appearing to show the proportion of foreigners in social housing in each London area. “This is morally wrong,” the post added. “We can’t be the social housing provider for the world.”