Sadiq Khan has just announced a new proposal to build 40,000 new council homes specifically prioritised for Muslims under the Muslim housing plan. The houses are to be built near mosques and halal shops.
This is inaccurate. The Mayor of London has pledged to build 40,000 new council homes by the end of the decade, but these are not earmarked for a specific demographic.
The Mayor of London has not announced a proposal to build 40,000 council homes “specifically prioritised” for Muslims, as has been claimed online.
A video originating on TikTok, where it has over 337,000 views, has been shared widely on Facebook, Instagram, and X (formerly Twitter), and makes a number of claims regarding Sadiq Khan and housing in the capital.
A woman speaking in the video says: “Sadiq Khan…he’s just announced a new proposal to build 40,000 new council homes specifically prioritised for Muslims under the Muslim housing plan. They're to be built near mosques and halal shops.”
But a spokesperson for the Mayor of London told Full Fact: “This claim is completely false.”
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There is no source cited in the video for the claim about the Labour Mayor of London, but it may have stemmed from an interview with Mr Khan on the Islam Channel, ahead of the May 2024 mayoral elections.
We fact checked a very similar claim misrepresenting this interview in 2024, claiming Sadiq Khan had pledged to build 46,000 homes in London “just for Muslims”.
The Islam Channel interview was shared on 26 April 2024 with the caption: “How is Sadiq Khan’s manifesto going to affect the Muslim community?” But while Mr Khan gives his answers in the context of the Muslim community, he does not pledge any homes exclusively for Muslims.
He actually said: “The other big issue faced in London, particularly Londoners of Islamic faith, is the issue of housing. And so we need to build far more homes in our city because you know often people from minority communities want to live near a mosque, near halal food, near places where there are other people like them for a variety of obvious reasons, and they're priced out because there's not enough housing. So we're going to build at least 40,000 council homes, at least 6,000 rent control homes.”
Mr Khan’s election manifesto, on which he was elected for a third consecutive term, included a policy of building 40,000 new council homes “by the end of the decade”.
It also promised to build 6,000 ‘Rent Control Homes’, for which rents are capped and linked to the income of key workers. However, neither of these pledges mention houses being prioritised for a certain demographic.
A search for the so-called ‘Muslim housing plan’ mentioned in the video also does not bring up any evidence that this is a real policy of the Mayor of London.
We have previously fact checked other misleading posts about this interview, which also claimed that he’d pledged houses and free education exclusively for Muslims.
Before sharing claims that you see about politicians on social media, it’s important to consider whether they come from a trustworthy and verified source. False or misleading claims about politicians have the potential to affect people’s opinions of individuals, parties or how they choose to vote.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because the pledge to build 40,000 new council homes does not include any reference to being prioritised for a specific demographic, and the Mayor’s office has said this claim is false.
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