Housing Rights CEO, Kate McCauley speaking following the publication of the NI Audit Office report on homelessness (published 25 March 2025), said:
"Housing Rights welcomes this important new report from the NI Audit Office and, in particular, the recommendations to ensure that homelessness prevention is prioritised.
For over 60 years, Housing Rights services have worked to prevent homelessness and ensure that when it does occur, it is rare, brief, and non-recurrent. We recognise the immense challenges faced across the housing and homelessness sectors but feel more could and should be done to prioritise early and effective intervention to prevent homelessness. We therefore welcome the report’s recommendation that data on all prevention outcomes should be collected and that there should be more meaningful and significant joint work on homelessness services.”
Housing Rights also welcomes the report's findings that the legal duties to prevent homelessness are less advanced than in other UK jurisdictions and that sufficient funding for services to prevent homelessness has not been available."
Ms McCauley continued;
"Whilst we recognise the immense resource challenges associated with the rise in temporary accommodation costs, it is critical that the NI Executive take meaningful action to ‘turn the ship around’ by prioritising homelessness prevention. Northern Ireland will soon be the only UK jurisdiction which has not enshrined in law, a legal duty to prevent homelessness. For almost ten years, Housing Rights has been advocating for a duty which would direct the financial resources needed to preventing homelessness at the earliest stage possible and to require the relevant authorities to work together. We know from our work that homelessness can be prevented and that not doing so only increases the cost to the public purse and devastatingly, to peoples’ lives."
Contact Housing Rights for further information.
