Homeless Connect welcomes Northern Ireland Assembly committee report on homelessness

There are 90,819 people waiting for social housing in Northern Ireland and significant numbers of children in temporary accommodation, and “the committee is particularly concerned that these trends point to a system that is increasingly weighted towards expensive crisis responses rather than earlier prevention”.

The committee’s key findings reveal concerns about the financial viability of critical services for young people and those with complex needs which could lead to those services closing.

There is also a recruitment crisis in the homelessness prevention sector, and a ‘legislative lag’, with laws that are outdated compared to those of England and Wales.

The report makes five recommendations, such as sustainable multi-year funding for the Supporting People Programme including an annual inflationary uplift, and a cross-departmental taskforce on homelessness.

This is in addition to a community housing strategy that supports the acquisition of properties by community housing trusts, a new strategic needs assessment and legislative reform to prevent homelessness.

Commenting on the report, Nicola McCrudden, chief executive of Homeless Connect, said: “As the representative body for the homelessness sector, we have long been aware from our members of the recruitment and retention crisis facing services.

“As the committee’s report notes, this crisis is a direct result of policy and funding decisions over the past decade that have failed to increase funding to providers in line with inflation. In the current financial year, these challenges have been further intensified by the NI Executive’s failure to pass a budget.”

Ms McCrudden said organisations in the sector were having to rely on short-term, quarterly budgets, which create instability and undermine planning and staff morale. She said this was “a direct consequence of ongoing uncertainty around the NI Executive budget”.

She pointed out that “the committee’s report also rightly recognises that homelessness is far more than a housing issue” and commended the committee for its “strong focus on interdepartmental collaboration”.

Lastly, she urged the minister for communities to consider the report’s recommendations, saying that Homeless Connect “fully endorses the committee’s recommendation that the department conducts a comprehensive review of homelessness legislation in Northern Ireland before the end of this Assembly mandate”.

She added: “In our view, the Housing (Northern Ireland) Order 1988 requires reconsideration to place a much stronger emphasis on homelessness prevention.

“This would represent an important shift towards tackling the root causes of homelessness and would be a constructive step towards developing legislation in the next Assembly mandate that helps prevent homelessness before it occurs, rather than responding only after the fact.”