Luke Butterly: Removing intimidation points won’t fix our housing crisis

The Northern Ireland Housing Executive awards points to social housing applicants who are at serious risk - mainly from paramilitaries - and who need to be rehoused

Photo by Griffin Taylor on Unsplash

Plans to remove intimidation points from social housing applications have been a long time coming.

The Housing Executive (NIHE) awards points to applicants who are at serious risk - mainly from paramilitaries - and who need to be rehoused.

But following an announcement from Communities Minister Gordon Lyons yesterday, the NIHE aims to remove intimidation points from April, meaning applicants who are under threat will not get enough points to push them high up the long social housing waiting list.

Mr Lyons, the DUP MLA for East Antrim, said points were removed partly due to frustration at the system.

“Currently, a victim of terrorism receives a greater award of points than a victim of domestic abuse,” he said.

“Someone targeted because of their ethnic identity receives more points than someone targeted because of their gender.”

Under the current scheme, housing applicants are awarded points under four categories.

A homeless applicant can get at least 70 points but people who face intimidation can get at least 200 points, essentially bumping them to the top of the housing queue.

But there are complexities in the system.

The Detail reported last year that although the number of people presenting as homeless due to intimidation has fallen consistently over the past five years, according to NIHE figures, a victims' charity was concerned that the figures were not reflective of the real situation.

Nevertheless, Mr Lyons has not been the only MLA to criticise the system.

In the past year, more than a dozen questions have been raised in the assembly about intimidation points, including around concerns that the system is widely abused.

Last February, the DUP’s Trevor Clarke said that “while people are intimidated from their homes, the system has, in many instances, been abused”.

During a debate in April, Gerry Kelly of Sinn Féin said the intimidation points system “has been massively abused”.

But where is the evidence?

In 2013, a joint report from the universities of Ulster and Cambridge on social housing allocations dismissed allegations of systematic abuse of intimidation points.

They stated that those with intimidation points were no more likely to move to new desirable accommodation, such as new-build properties, than any other group.

Similarly, research by the Department for Communities in 2016 found that people with intimidation points were awarded a home quicker, but not quickly.

The average wait for someone without intimidation points was 38 months, compared to 22 months for those with those points.

More recently, a 2020 report from Criminal Justice Inspectorate Northern Ireland into Base 2 – the organisation which verifies claims of intimidation – found that “allegations of widespread abuse of the scheme” were “unfounded”.

But even if the scheme was widely abused, what impact would that have?

An average of 215 households are accepted as homeless due to intimidation – mainly due to paramilitaries - each year.

The figure is a drop in the ocean compared to the number of people on the social housing waiting list – currently more than 47,000 applicants.

Even if every single case of intimidation were baseless, they would amount to less than half of one per cent of the waiting list.

The removal of intimidation points may certainly mean that some people at risk of becoming homeless for other reasons – such as domestic violence – will move up the housing waiting list.

But until there is an increase in the number of social homes built – currently around 1,400 a year – the vast majority of applicants will continue to wait for years.

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