When tabloids attack

Sonali Gardens in Tower Hamlets, east London, is the kind of scheme common to any area that has a large immigrant population. That's why those who know about the development, which has been earmarked for 40 elderly Asian people, were surprised to see it featured in a number of national newspapers last week.

On April 28, under the headline "Old people's home built for Muslims", the Daily Mail claimed the scheme – developed by Circle 33 Housing Trust for Tower Hamlets council – would be the "first publicly owned housing block in Britain aimed exclusively at Asians". A Daily Star editorial on the same day took the uncompromising view that Sonali Gardens should be knocked down because it promoted "segregation" reminiscent of South Africa under apartheid. Both papers appeared oblivious to the fact that, while Sonali Gardens received no social housing grant, governments have subsidised homes for specific minority-ethnic groups for more than 20 years. So why the sudden interest?

One reason is that there appears to have been a public loss of faith in the principle of multiculturalism, which recognises the needs of minority-ethnic groups to be different, yet equally valid. Last month Trevor Phillips, the chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, declared in an interview with The Times that multiculturalism, which has underpinned government policy since the 1960s, now "means the wrong things", not least because it encourages "separateness".

By this logic, reputed to have strong support in government, Sonali Gardens and other schemes, whether run by small black and minority-ethnic housing associations or mainstream RSLs, appear to be damned.

Tower Hamlets, which commissioned Sonali Gardens after research uncovered an underlying need for extra care services among the borough's growing Bangladeshi community, thinks not. "All residents are entitled to services that reflect their religious, cultural, social and linguistic needs," said a council spokeswomen. "What would be discriminatory would be to ignore the needs of older Bangladeshi people by failing to make sure they have the same access to extra care as their white contemporaries."

The "many years of national policy" in favour of specialised services were one of the motivating factors behind Sonali Gardens, the council says. Julie Webb, group director of support initiatives at Circle 33 Housing Group, says: "We are ensuring that we have the right staff with the appropriate skills and knowledge and a building design to meet the needs of its service users."

But some say housing providers must recognise that national policy is changing. A more diverse range of immigrants is expected arrive in the UK following EU enlargement, and it will become harder to rely on notions of multiculturalism to shape service provision. Those who doubt that things have changed should take note of Phillips' trip to Oldham on 27 April to visit housing projects aimed at integrating Muslims and whites.

"The [multiculturalism] debate does have an impact on housing," says Gerard Lemos, partner in social research company Lemos & Crane. It may not yet affect the day-to-day operation of services, he admits, "but if it isn't addressed we will end up repeating the past: new specialists will have to be created to satisfy demand that is left unmet". And the prospect of a multitude of housing providers, one for each minority group, is not likely to please the government.

Many social housing estates are already segregated, warns Lemos, and new immigrants stand less chance of being integrated than those that arrived in the 1950s and 1960s. "The people arriving today don't have the same ties to British culture and history," he says. Previous generations of immigrants may have had a different view of colonial history than most white Britons, for example, but it was to some extent "shared". This is becoming less true, says Lemos.

It would be discriminatory to ignore the needs of older Bangladeshi people by failing to make sure they have the same access to care as their white contemporaries 

Tower Hamlets Spokeswoman

His view is that anything that encourages increased specialisation in housing services – as multiculturalism implicitly does – has to be balanced against the need to prevent social fragmentation.

The case for the defence
Jas Bains, director of Birmginham-based Ashram Housing Association, speaks for many housing professionals when he defends specialist schemes. "I don't think anyone could convince me at this point in time that older people's needs can be met within the mainstream without being culturally and socially isolated," he says. "English is sometimes a second or third language for them."

Sonali Gardens offers Bengali-speaking staff, separate prayer and ablution facilities and Halal food – the kind of services that it is simply more practical to provide in specialist accommodation, according to Anil Singh, chief executive of Bradford-based Manningham Housing Association.

"Providing multicultural services in one place creates major staffing problems," he says. "Food and care services would be difficult to manage – you could end up needing six different cooks for each group – and I would question whether people could live peaceably together in that kind of facility." Conflict, he says, cannot be ruled out in a mainstream sheltered housing scheme, and that can inadvertently give rise to cultural misunderstandings.

The uncomfortable truth, according to Singh, is that specialist housing schemes will be needed as long as mainstream providers fail to tailor their services to the needs of people from minority ethnic communities.

"The evidence shows that BME elders simply do not apply for mainstream sheltered accommodation," he says. "We need to encourage the mainstream providers to become more involved." That way, the role of providing specialist services would not be marginalised to an ever-expanding band of small BME associations.

Some mainstream associations, such as Circle 33, Hanover and Housing 21, are responding to the unfulfilled needs of BME communities. But Bishop David Walker, a board member at specialist housing provider Churches Housing Association of Dudley District, says: "Most associations don't have at their cutting edge the sensitivity to minority needs that specialist organisations do."

The Housing Corporation declined to comment on the issue but, with the multiculturalism debate set to continue, the hope in the sector is that, in the interests of social cohesion, schemes such as Sonali Gardens won't again be represented by newspapers or politicians as "exceptions" in order to fit their editorial or electoral agendas.