AQW 50039/11-16

Ms Claire Sugden
Independent
East Londonderry

Tabled Date: 21/10/2015
Answered On Date: 05/11/2015
Priority Written: No

Question:
To ask the Minister for Social Development for his assessment of (ii) homelessness in the last five years; and (ii) the capacity of the current housing stock to address this issue.

Answer:

With regard to point (i) the changes in homelessness over the last 5 years have shown the following:

From 2010-15 there was a decrease in the number of people presenting as homeless by around 3% reducing from 20,158 to 19,621 with the trend in households accepted as statutorily homeless remaining stable over the 5 year period at around 50% of applicants;

Single households are consistently the highest household group of homeless presenters, representing a trend of about 50% of all households, with families at around 31% being the second largest household category.

The trend in the same period for the top 3 reasons for households presenting as homeless remain as sharing breakdown/family dispute, accommodation not reasonable, and loss of rented accommodation.

With regard to point (ii) the social housing sector capacity has been significantly developed to address housing need has through the use of existing stock and new build. Other housing solutions, including the private rented sector, have also been utilised to address housing need.

The Housing Executive and Housing Associations allocate around 11,000 properties each year. The majority of these are allocated to homeless households, with 68% of all allocations in the last financial year being to those owed a full housing duty under homelessness legislation.

A total of 7,598 new or additional social housing homes have been provided over this period, averaging 1,520 completions per year.

The Information provided in this response is governed by the Principles and Protocols of the Code of Practice for Official Statistics. This is enforced by UK Statistics Authority.