Whether we can afford them is a moot point, the system we use is broken,Patel's idea to send them to Rwanda won't work, Israel have been doing this and the big complaint is there's no jobs or housing and no infrastructure to deal with it the systems that were supposed to be in place aren't
and Rwanda are being well paid for this and would also be by the UK government and as well as the cash we also get Rwandan citizens with chronic health conditions who will be integrated into the support systems of NHS etc. You have to wonder about the sanity of the people who come up with these schemes.
The housing we need aren't 4 bedroom town houses with £800k price tags but social housing which has lessened greatly since the council house sell off instigated by Margaret Thatcher which would have worked better if the monies from the sales had been enough to build new social housing but the discounts in some cases were around 70%. These houses have been sold on in a lot of cases to private landlords who ramp the rents up to way above what people would have been charged by local authorities or housing associations, there's some good landlords but also a lot of poor ones too and not enough properties to go around.
Governments have made pledges on social housing that none have kept regardless of party and attempts to raise the standards of private rented housing in Parliament was blocked by a significant number of MPs who surprise,surprise are private landlords. We have far too many MPs who serve their own interests instead of their constituency and the country These are the people who are bleeding the country financially.