No, London Mayor Sadiq Khan has not pledged to build 46,000 new homes ‘just for Muslims’

Posts being shared on social media misinterpret comments made by London Mayor Sadiq Khan to falsely claim he pledged to build 46,000 houses “just for Muslims”.

A video of Mr Khan speaking has been shared with the caption: “Sadiq Khan says he will build 46,000 new homes in London just for Muslims who want to live closer to a mosque.”

While this is a genuine interview with Mr Khan, he did not make the comments attributed to him in the posts. 

The video shows Mr Khan during an interview shared by the Islam Channel before May’s mayoral elections in which he won 43.8% of the vote and was reelected for his third consecutive term. The interview was shared on 26 April with the caption: “How is Sadiq Khan’s manifesto going to affect the Muslim community?” And 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 issues 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 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.”

The manifesto he was elected on includes a “key pledge” to build 40,000 new council homes by 2030 and 6,000 Rent Control Homes (where authorities can set rent levels or limit increases) in “areas where they are needed most”. There’s no mention of the housing being for a specific demographic. 

This is not the first time we’ve seen online posts misinterpret comments made by Mr Khan during this interview—posts circulating in May similarly claimed he’d pledged houses and free education exclusively for Muslims. 

As we wrote at the time, a spokesperson for Mr Khan said such claims are “completely false” and added that: “The Mayor did not say these words—and can clearly be heard discussing his policy of providing free skills training to any young Londoner who is unemployed or in low-paid work, as well as talking about the need to build more housing for all.”

In July, the newly-elected Labour government set a new annual target of 80,000 homes to be built in London compared with the 35,000 built in 2023. For more information on house building in England, you can read or watch our explainer.  

We’ve written about other false claims relating to Mr Khan, including a suspected deepfake audio clip allegedly recording him saying ‘Remembrance weekend’ should be postponed, but we could find no evidence that it was genuine.