PRIORITIES: UK: Birmingham Council to Home 500 Syrians, Ignoring Plight of Homeless Locals. [archive] “A 2009 Freedom of Information Act request put the number of homeless families on the list at 464, while noting that there were 18,834 individual applicants on the council’s homeless register. These numbers are unlikely to have reduced in the intervening years, as overall social housing demand doubled in England [archive] from one million in 2001 to two million by 2013.”