Press Release
Homeless Connect warmly welcomes Communities Committee Report on Homelessness and Supporting People
Report on Homelessness and the Supporting People Programme
Homeless Connect has welcomed the publication today of the Communities Committee report on homelessness and the Supporting People programme at the Northern Ireland Assembly. The report highlights the scale and urgency of the challenges facing people experiencing homelessness and the homelessness sector and makes five important and timely recommendations for change.
Commenting on the report, Nicola McCrudden, Chief Executive of Homeless Connect, said:
“We warmly welcome this report from the Communities Committee and the leadership it has shown in calling for real and meaningful change. The homelessness sector makes a profound difference for so many people who are at risk of, or experiencing, homelessness. However, the sector is struggling to cope with the consequences of over a decade of underfunding alongside rising levels of need.
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.
Organisations across the homelessness sector- including statutory partners- are once again having to operate on quarterly budgets. This short‑term approach creates instability, undermines service planning and damages staff morale. We know that this is not what the Minister for Communities wants, but it is a direct consequence of ongoing uncertainty around the NI Executive budget. This is already having damaging consequences and is driving a deepening crisis across services.
Homelessness services continue to struggle to recruit and retain staff, with failed recruitment campaigns and persistent vacancies becoming increasingly common. These pressures directly affect the quality and continuity of the support services are able to offer. Providers want to pay staff fairly for the vital work they do but are constrained by chronic underfunding and the ongoing reliance on short term funding.
The Committee’s report also rightly recognises that homelessness is far more than a housing issue. Too often, people at risk of or experiencing homelessness who require support from health and justice services are being let down. The consequences of these systemic failures are frequently borne by the homelessness sector and by statutory partners working at the frontline who are left to pick up the pieces. We commend the Committee for its strong focus on interdepartmental collaboration and urge the Executive collectively to show leadership by ensuring that senior officials work together to deliver real system change.
We strongly urge the Minister for Communities and his Executive colleagues to carefully consider the report and its recommendations. We fully endorse the Committee’s recommendation that the Department conducts a comprehensive review of homelessness legislation in Northern Ireland before the end of this Assembly mandate. 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.”
