Housing in a time of fear: the bad policy choices hamstringing our response

Three weeks on from the beginning of coordinated racist violence in Belfast, too many displaced people are still waiting for shelter that feels safe. Community response continues to fill gaps created by specific housing policy decisions around supply and allocation.

In the area of supply, the shortfall in social housing has its roots in the failure to replace at anything like the rate needed the over 124,000 social homes sold under the ‘right to buy’ House Sales Scheme since 1981. Policy decisions like the 2002 move restricting the Housing Executive’s building of social homes and the related structural borrowing constraints placed on it  -- reversal of which have been under discussion for years now – have not helped.

There have been no robust measures to tackle the structural housing segregation in place at the Housing Executive’s founding in 1971. In the absence of up-to-date data, FactCheckNI estimate that nine in ten social homes are segregated by religion. The Independent Reporting Commission tracking paramilitary activity has repeatedly called for “ambitious targets” to reduce segregation in both housing and education, considering these “vital in addressing the contextual factors” behind enduring paramilitarism – but there have been no concerted, impactful policy or targets put in place to do that. (Many of the relatively small number of shared housing initiatives (meaning 70% majority community, 30% ‘other’) have been plagued by the same type of violence and intimidation that we witnessed last week.)

Crucially, NI authorities have de facto codified the 1971 geographical boundaries between communities of different religious backgrounds rather than challenging them.

This means that as housing need in predominately Catholic areas has risen, the land available for Catholic social homes has remained constrained, and people remain homeless for years (in 2025, Communities Minister Gordon Lyons cut a proposal to ring fence grant funding for areas of acute housing need from the draft Housing Supply Strategy before publishing it).

Meanwhile adjacent predominately Protestant areas have seen vacant homes go derelict (and in response have sought state regeneration funding to bring families back). The most obvious places to build – empty expanses of land at former interfaces, frequently publicly owned (think Girdwood, Mackies), at times private (Hillview) – either remain derelict or become retail sites, or community centres, or parks – while the number of homeless families grows.

Recent DFC housing policy development has focused almost exclusively on new mechanisms for intermediate housing for people with more means – which does nothing to increase supply for those in acute need. 

With regard to policy around allocations, recent changes to the social housing system have removed the 200 ‘intimidation points’ formerly awarded to victims so that they could quickly be allocated a permanent home somewhere safer. The report of the 2011 consultation on this said that the “the overwhelming majority” of respondents agreed that the Primary Social Need (PSN) point scheme would need upscaled in order to ensure effective cover for victims. However in January 2025 Communities Minister Gordon Lyons announced the end of intimidation points – and a simultaneous PSN review (with no changes to date). Families forced out of their homes join the growing ranks of the homeless cycling through short-term, often distant temporary accommodation – adding to their trauma.

The four tests used by the Housing Executive to assess Full Duty Applicant homelessness status (eligibility, homelessness, priority need, intentionality) pose another barrier; ‘priority need’ requires an assessment of vulnerability, with some patently homeless people being told they are not vulnerable enough for the Housing Executive to have a duty to house them. Scotland abolished its ‘priority need’ requirement in 2012; we should do likewise. 

Recent changes to the Housing Selection Scheme around allocating ‘difficult to let’ properties and using choice-based letting work within the parameters of the existing highly segregated social housing system and risk entrenching it further.

Upcoming measures like banding of the waiting list will put an end to the Housing Executive’s vaunted allocation of homes solely based on need. It would add factors such as time on the waiting list or willingness to ‘downsize’ to a smaller home into the mix, meaning that people on fewer points may be offered a home in advance of people with greater need. If used to fill homes vacated after sectarian or racist violence, this measure would further entrench segregation.

The initial 2013 academic research underpinning recent changes to the social housing system produced a detailed recommendation for oversight of housing authorities’ allocation processes through a new Independent Scrutiny Panel to ensure the housing service was “sustainable, fair, equitable, robust, consistent, customer driven, transparent, compliant, efficient and value for money”. That recommendation was quietly dropped by the DFC. Similarly, calls for a statutory housing ombudsman in a February 2025 NI Assembly motion for a ‘new deal for private renters’ have not been followed up. 

Change in these areas would make the Housing Executive better at meeting the needs of victims of racist violence and threat – but it requires political will.