Housing The lack of housing availability in Northern Ireland
However, CSO4 noted that there were significant barriers to asylum seekers and refugees being able to take up available provision: “… you couldn’t go into college even to do essential skills, so you won’t have English, and the ESOL classes in Northern Ireland are very limited, there’s no full-time ESOL classes, and the ESOL classes particularly with children who haven’t maybe had a lot of education, we’re making an assumption that everyone’s going to know…, how to write, have literacy. And there’s very little support to get to college in terms of travel, there are a few colleges dotted around” (CSO4). CSO4 said this was a particular challenge in rural areas: “In terms of transport, it is people getting to and from college, it’s people who are living outside of Belfast getting round in more rural areas, people are quite isolated in some of the hotels because there is nothing, there’s fields and it’s an industrial area” (CSO4). CSO5 agreed that the lack of availability of transport restricted access to college education: “… young people and adults even were getting places to study English at Belfast Met and they didn’t have the money on their £8 a week or £9 a week depending on when it was, they couldn’t get there, they just couldn’t… Because those places were gold dust, everybody wanted the place. They got the place, they had the place and they can’t get there…” (CSO5). PB5 commented as follows: “… unless you can walk to a provision from where you’re living, if you’ve low or no income, those options aren’t open. And as soon as you go away from Belfast the geography in Northern Ireland tells you that you’re not going to have as much choice” (PB5). CSO5 said that places to study English at college were only available for 17 year olds, meaning there was gap for children leaving school at 16 without English: “… they’re not allowed into Belfast Met to study English. There’s still not enough places, they’re still like gold dust those places. But even… they’re not even eligible for those places until they’re 17. So, there’s, kind of, that enforced year…” (CSO5). W3 participants noted that there were waiting lists operating for all ESOL courses in Belfast area and a lack of available places throughout. Placements could arise in other areas, however asylum seekers and refugees would be unable to access them. CSO8 commented that while there was no obvious solution to the problem, in effect children who arrived between 14 and 17 were often being deprived of their right to education: “I don’t have a solution for it but that is a real gap for children, like, 14, 15, 16, 17-year-olds who are quite often missing out on education. And that is having huge knock-on effects, like, for years them trying to catch up for them getting into, like, ESOL for a couple of hours a weeks. But they’re children and they should be in school. And that’s hard because the statutory policies here, localised policies, you know, they aren’t doing anything wrong but when we’re looking at the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, that all children under 18 have a right to education, it’s not adding up” (CSO8).
Participants very commonly raised the housing crisis in Northern Ireland, with W3 participants saying that the shortage of housing was a significant challenge for Northern Ireland society wide but a particularly difficult and complex issue for asylum seekers and refugees. Asylum seekers and refugees (like other people) had understandable reasons for wanting to live in a certain area in order to access schools and services, and feel safe. However, there were around 47,000 households on the waiting list for social housing. Refugees did not receive any additional points linked to their immigration status and were added to the general waiting list – they were not disadvantaged but faced difficulties reflective of those faced by the wider population. PB7 explained the problem with housing supply as follows: “… there’s generally a huge housing shortage… our waiting list is the highest it’s ever been… about 47,000 people who have chosen to be on the waiting list… there’s a slow movement off that list, either people source their own housing solutions, or they can wait quite a long time for social housing because it’s in really short supply. So that’s a, sort of, population wide, Northern Ireland wide, issue, every area of Northern Ireland now has housing need” (PB7). PB4 noted the pressure on temporary accommodation and the slow pipeline of new build properties: “… we’re sitting with nearly 4,500, closer to 5,000 people in temporary accommodation at any one point in time. So the pressures on the system are huge. This year our current projection for new build is the lowest we’ve ever had, around 600 units, so the housing supply pressures, whether it’s temporary or permanent, are significant” (PB4). PB4 noted that there was a particularly acute shortage of housing that would be suitable for large families and disabled people. W3 participants noted that properties with a downstairs bedroom suitable for disabled people simply “did not exist” . CSO12 agreed that housing provided often did not meet needs and gave the example of a woman with a high risk pregnancy: “There’s also a lady… we were helping recently who was pregnant and was also living in temporary accommodation in, like, sort of, an upstairs flat and was pretty much confined to her room upstairs because she couldn’t go up and down stairs, it was just too much for her. That was a high-risk pregnancy too, so I guess people with disabilities, mobility issues, pregnancy for sure” (CSO12). W1 and W3 participants noted that the lack availability of housing was exacerbated as a result of the Northern Ireland Housing Executive (NIHE) and Mears competing over housing. Although NIHE could provide private landlord with higher rents, Mears contracts included covering repairs and reinstating properties to their original state which was more attractive to landlords. Mears effectively had “deeper pockets” . This not only created problems in terms of planning for asylum seeker accommodation and temporary homelessness accommodation but, as CSO5 noted, had the effect of driving up rental prices leading to increased community tensions: “Mears and the Housing Executive are, kind of, in competition over private rental… which is driving up prices for everybody else” (CSO5).
Final report of the of Ombudspersons and the Protection of Refugees and Asylum Seekers (OPRAS) project | 35
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