Summer’s over. Now It’s Time to Make Homelessness Prevention a Government Priority

Kate McCauley is the Chief Executive, Housing Rights

As the Northern Ireland Assembly returns from summer recess, Ministers and MLAs have an opportunity to make a fundamental shift in how we respond to homelessness.

The change is simple in principle but transformational in practice: stop waiting for people to become homeless before we act.

Northern Ireland is facing a homelessness crisis. Rising demand is placing increasing pressure on individuals, families and public services, while spending on temporary accommodation continues to grow. Yet too many people still reach crisis point before meaningful support becomes available.

The problem is not a lack of understanding about what works. There is broad agreement that prevention is better than crisis response. However, our current legal framework remains focused on responding to homelessness once it has happened. Public authorities have statutory duties to deal with homelessness, but no equivalent duty to prevent it.

As a result, resources are often directed towards managing emergencies rather than stopping those emergencies from arising.

Northern Ireland is now falling behind the rest of the UK and Ireland. Scotland, Wales and England have all introduced reforms to strengthen homelessness prevention and encourage earlier intervention.

Scotland and Wales, in particular, have recognised that homelessness is not simply a housing issue but one that requires coordinated action across health, justice, social care and other public services. In ROI, a Homeless Prevention Framework is being developed to coordinate cross-departmental efforts and integrate services across the public sector.

That matters because homelessness rarely begins with housing alone. Relationship breakdown, domestic abuse, poor health, financial difficulties, leaving care or leaving prison can all increase the risk of homelessness. Preventing homelessness often depends on agencies working together before a crisis occurs.

Evidence from our work at Housing Rights signals that a statutory duty to prevent homelessness could help drive that change. Such a duty could require public authorities to identify risks earlier, take reasonable steps to intervene and work collaboratively to prevent homelessness wherever possible. Crucially, it would make prevention a shared responsibility across government rather than leaving housing services to pick up the pieces after crisis occurs.

Homelessness prevention doesn’t just make good sense in societal terms, it is also about making best use of (often limited) public resources. We need to start this transformation now, so that we can move from short term costly responses to more sustainable solutions.

Preventing homelessness is already recognised within the current Programme for Government. As parties look ahead to the 2027 Assembly election, the opportunity now is to build on that commitment and ensure prevention becomes a clear priority in the next mandate, connected to wider Executive ambitions including tackling poverty, improving wellbeing, reducing health inequalities and reducing reoffending.
That is why the next Programme for Government should make preventing homelessness an explicit priority and commit to progressing proposals for a statutory prevention duty.

These issues will be explored at Housing Rights’ Stormont event, Transforming Prevention Together: Improving Lives and Making the Best Use of Resources, on 14 September. The event will bring together policymakers, practitioners, academics and people with lived experience to examine how Northern Ireland can build a more effective prevention system.

At the event we will be joined by Professor Suzanne Fitzpatrick, who helped shape homelessness prevention reforms in Scotland and Wales, and will share lessons from those jurisdictions.

We know that intervening earlier can prevent people reaching crisis and reduce the pressure that homelessness places on individuals, families and public services. The challenge now is to turn that principle into a system that consistently acts before homelessness occurs.

As a new Assembly term begins, there is an opportunity to start that work.