Housing Executive placing Derry children in 'non standard accommodation'

Derry City and Strabane District Council has been told by the Housing Executive it has 'run out of options' and is 'placing children in non standard accommodation'.

Housing Executive Chief Executive, Grainia Long said it is only seen as a last resort option but has happened 'too many times'.

She was speaking at the council’s Governance and Strategic Planning meeting on Tuesday.

“We have an informal KPI internally that we will not place children in hotel accommodation, unless it's in exceptional circumstances and for very short periods and unless we can find literally nothing else,” she said. “It is unfortunately the case that we have run out of options too many times and are placing children in non standard accommodation, but that's not where we want to be.

“Anything that is either not block booked or leased, we consider to be non standard. In other words, it tends to be a hotel or a bed and breakfast.”

She said the North has increased its supply of temporary accommodation 'much faster' than Britain. The majority of this accommodation is 'own front door accommodation' but this has been difficult to find in Derry.

“From the day I took this job I was very open that the placement of children, for example, and vulnerable people in hotel accommodation, other than for very short periods, is unacceptable.

“So our focus is on going out to the private market to landlords and leasing temporary accommodation from them. So the family's households have their own front door.

“That's still not sustainable over the long term. If you're a family, being placed in a flat on the wrong side of the city that's not sustainable for children trying to get them to school, but it is better than a hotel.

“It's still not good enough. but it is better than a hotel. But it's still not good enough.

“In this city, we found it to be really, really difficult. There is a really significant dearth of private rented sector accommodation. So we've had to use much larger amounts of non standard accommodation done in other cities.”

The amount spent on temporary accommodation in the council area was around £6.82 million, she said.

Cllr Sandra Duffy, who works with First Housing, said she has seen a 'saturation' of non standard accommodation.

“In the latest report we had 127 who have been through my service within the last quarter, which is a striking amount of people who have very complex needs and are very vulnerable due to homelessness but that's only the tip of the iceberg in terms of the city.

“We have seen the saturation of non standard accommodation. We have seen it particularly in some areas which has caused great concern to the residents who would traditionally live within those areas.

“Now, I want to be very clear. This is not around vulnerable people. It's just around the concentration of them and I completely recognize that support has to be put in place.

“There has to be support that follows people and if people are coming from other areas, there has to be some level of support to address their needs because if you put somebody very vulnerable with complex needs in to place the support needs to follow them or else you're setting that person up to fail.

“We know that a lot of these people have been in the homeless cycle for quite some time and have been through numerous supportive accommodations, non standard accommodations and different locations. So we need that support to follow those individuals.”

Ms Long said NIHE is working to address the housing issue and significantly more money has been invested than in previous years.

“We have invested more in our tenants’ homes across Northern Ireland over the past 12 months than in any of the previous 15 years. This investment has been delivered in a challenging, external environment, demonstrating our ongoing commitment to improving the health and well-being of our tenants.

“In Derry and Strabane, we invested £8.73m on planned maintenance including stock improvements last year, with a further £5.26m spent on response maintenance.

“We worked hard to support the most vulnerable in our communities with £9.14m invested through the Supporting People programme to fund 82 services provided by partner organisations across the district. This investment provided housing support to 1,963 people last year.”

Last year, £122.63m was invested in new-build homes in the Derry City and Strabane district, with 1,517 housing association units on-site at March 2023. There were also 545 social housing completions during the same period.

However, she added that the large budgets being seen to combat homelessness are 'bittersweet'.

“This is the largest budget for homelessness that I have seen. And it will without question pass 20 million and it would probably pass 25-26 million. But it's a budget that will fund urgent responses. And none of us think urgent response is how to do it. Any of us knows when you look at homelessness you should fund prevention,” she said.

Cllr Sandra Duffy said that she has seen staff leave the sector because pay has failed to rise with inflation.

“We have seen uplifts within health and other sectors and the staff who are working within Supporting People Projects have quite similar tasks, although it's around housing related support, and we're all suffering from cost of living pressure.

“We have seen some excellent staff who are working with on the sector actually leaving because the pressures placed on them are too great,” she said.

Ms Long told councillors they tried to secure an inflationary uplift for staff but it was denied.

“I agree with the point that providers are really struggling. They're struggling to retain staff, and very, very committed staff who do not want to leave the sector but have to pay their own housing costs. So we will continue to make that case,” she said.

“We did bid for an inflationary uplift for supporting providers, and we didn't receive it. And for this year, we received obviously ongoing funding from last year. And we were disappointed about that. And again, I think the department has done as much as it could and gone as far as it can. And I think if there's additional money, we will keep making the case.

Cllr Shaun Harkin said he has seen the issue get worse year on year since he was first voted in.

“This is my fifth year as a councillor, which isn't a long amount of time but each year that you've come in, unfortunately, the statistics are getting worse,” the People Before Profit councillor said.

“The overall housing application list has grown. The number of people in housing stress has grown and that's true as well for this district. I don't see any short term solution to it.

“I think what's going to take the break this is something similar to what happened when my relatives and I'm sure some of your relatives marched in the Springtown Camp demanding change.”

He said it is very worrying to hear that NIHE is running out of options for temporary accommodation for homeless people.

“What's going to happen? I mean, are we looking at a situation where we're going to see families in parks or going to police stations like we've seen in the South? Because the pressures only growing.”

Ms Long said it is 'important to understand' they are not sitting in a 'fatalist' position and are working to mitigate the issue.

She said one thing she would like to do is to acquire properties from landlords who are selling and leaving the private rental sector.

“It would make sense for a public landlord that has 82,000 homes currently to be able to acquire properties now when they come on the market rather than lose them.

“So we are discussing that with the department for communities. I think it would be a solution that we could look at and there are properties on the market that I think would be good value for public money.

“We would then hold them in perpetuity as a public good and I think communities would benefit from that,” she said.

NIHE has recently had success with a pilot project in Belfast which brings together multiple agencies, which Ms Long hopes to bring to Derry.

“There's a project that we've piloted in Belfast called complex lives where all the agencies work together and take a person centred approach.

“I would like to see that here. I'd like to see it in other council areas.

“You have my commitment that if we can do it, we will certainly do it. It is a very difficult funding environment, but we haven't taken our eyes off that prize.”