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Briefing by the Equality Can’t Wait (ECW) Group on the Northern Ireland Executive’s compliance with ICESCR’s Article 11 on the Right to Adequate Housing

Participation and the Practice of Rights (PPR)6A Albert StreetBelfastBT12 4HQTel: 02890313315Email: sara@pprproject.org www.pprproject.org

#EQUALITYCANTWAIT

Human Rights Concerns • The failure of the NI Executive, in line with its obligations under Article 11 of ICESCR, to fulfil the right to

adequate housing for Catholics in North Belfast.

• The failure of the NI Executive, in line with its obligations under Article 2 and Article 11 of ICESCR, to ‘take steps to the maximum extent of its available resources’ to progressively realise the right to adequate housing.

• The failure by the NI Executive, in line with its obligations under Article 2 and Article 11 of ICESCR, to guarantee that the right to housing is exercised without discrimination of any kind as to race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.

• The failure by the NI Executive, in line with its obligations under Article 2 and Article 11 of ICESCR, to ensure that the right of destitute asylum seekers to housing is protected and fulfilled.

Suggested Questions

The Committee may wish to ask the NI Executive how it intends to undo the regressive measures adopted in relation to housing provision on the basis of objective need, as well as what concrete steps it is taking to implement the Committee’s 2009 Concluding Observation in relation to religious inequality in housing provision for Catholics in North Belfast.

The Committee may wish to ask the NI Executive how it is using all of its available powers to ensure that public land is used to realise the right to adequate housing, particularly for disadvantaged groups such as Catholics in North Belfast.

The Committee may wish to ask the State party how it intends to ensure that any legislative, policy or funding barriers preventing the provision of emergency accommodation for individuals with no, or limited access to public funds, are removed.

The Committee may wish to ask the State party how they intend to ensure that asylum seekers are provided with a social services assessment to establish the nature and extent of support they require before they are knowingly made homeless.

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Context

The Equality Can’t Wait (ECW) campaign is made up of people in housing crisis across Belfast who use a human rights based approach to campaign for their right to adequate housing to be fulfilled. The group is supported by PPR.

In its 2009 Concluding Observations the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights highlighted its concerns in relation to the chronic shortage of housing, in particular social housing for the most marginalised and disadvantaged including Catholic families in North Belfast.

In 2013 the UN Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing called for “additional efforts to address challenges to overcome persistent inequalities in housing in North Belfast”.

These calls have been echoed by other international and domestic human rights bodies including the Council of Europe Human Rights Commissioner, the Northern Ireland Children’s Commissioner and the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission. The Equality Commission for Northern Ireland has also recognised housing inequality for Catholics in north Belfast.

Religious Inequality in Access to Housing in North Belfast

There is a housing crisis in Northern Ireland with a total of 40,000 people on the housing waiting list and 20000 in housing stress. In Belfast alone in 2015 there were almost 12,000 people on the social housing waiting list in Belfast, with almost 7000 of these in ‘housing stress’. Around 6000 families presented as homeless and over 3000 were accepted as such. In response the government completed a total of only 542 social homes last year.

This failure to build homes is impacting disproportionately on the Catholic population who live in areas where the chronic housing shortages exist, such as North Belfast. This area was heavily impacted upon by the conflict and continues to be one of the most segregated parts of Northern Ireland, with communities divided along religious/community background lines by physical security barriers and other barriers which have not changed in over 40 years despite shifting changing demographics. There has been a consistent increase in the young Catholic population and a decline in the ageing Protestant population. In 2008 the Department for Social Development projected that between 2008 -2012 96% of the need for additional housing in North Belfast would be for the Catholic community – however, no action was taken to address this.

Since 2009, rather than addressing the Committee’s recommendation in relation to housing inequality for Catholics in North Belfast, there is clear evidence that the NI Executive has taken a number of regressive steps in regard to fulfilling the right to adequate housing for this community. In 2009 the Housing Executive’s ( Northern Ireland’s strategic housing authority) previous policy of ‘ring-fencing’ of social housing units for North Belfast, in recognition of housing inequality in those areas, was ended, with the Housing Executive citing as the reason ‘emerging evidence suggesting it is having a detrimental effect on meeting housing need elsewhere’ for this policy change. Changes to monitoring methodologies used by the NI Housing Executive, with a move from a combined ‘self-reported’ and ‘perceived’ religious background methodology to the use of ‘self-reported’ religious background

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only, has also meant that the level of objective housing need within the Catholic community is being under calculated by at least 20%.

There are stark differences in provision of housing units across the two communities which do not in any way reflect objective need – in 2015 there was a surplus of 96 housing unit in Protestant areas of North Belfast in contrast with a deficit of 858 additional units in Catholic areas.

Coupled with this, a significant community differential exists in relation to waiting times on the social housing waiting list, with Protestants in North Belfast waiting 11.5 months on average while Catholics waited 20.7 months according to Northern Ireland Housing Executive figures.

Using land to address shortages as well as inequalities

The use of public land to realise housing rights is a developing human rights issue of global concern. The ( now former) UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing, Ms. Raquel Rolnik identified a number of obstacles that exist to using public land for housing – these include poor land governance, corruption in land administration and the tight relationship that exists between tenure status and land values.

The Equality Can’t Wait’s campaign to realise housing rights for the Catholic community in North Belfast highlights the extent of these challenges in the Northern Ireland context. In 2015 residents undertook a ‘photo-mapping’ exercise to identify vacant land, both public land and land which the public authorities had powers to vest, which could be used to build social housing. Their ‘Surrounded by Land but ‘no space’ for Housing?’ report documents the significant amounts of available land in Belfast which has the potential to be used to address the housing crisis, including 5 major windfall sites.

Despite this, zero housing has been built to date on any of these 5 windfall sites. Instead, recent years have seen significant swathes of city centre land being purchased by private developers to build student accommodation, following the decision of one of Northern Ireland’s universities to relocate its campus to Belfast city centre. The NI Executive has also prioritised other narrow political and/or economic agendas over the need for social housing for the North Belfast Catholic community.

The political bargaining in relation to the final, extremely limited number of homes built on the huge former British army barracks Girdwood site in North Belfast ignored objective need and erroneously prioritised the notion of ‘ good relations’ over equality which is the primary duty in legislation. Media reports of proposals being mooted by the NI Executive to sell off the publicly owned, 20 acre Belfast Harbour site, with its potential to support 3,500 homes, in order to offset a proposed reduction in corporation tax, highlighted the lack of priority being given by the Northern Ireland Executive to the provision of social housing.

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Housing for Asylum Seekers

In its list of issues the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights asked the state party to provide information on whether essential services for rejected asylum seekers are available throughout the state party.

In its response the state party said “asylum seekers who are destitute are provided with accommodation and a basic living allowance”.

Research conducted by a group of destitute asylum seekers in Northern Ireland (Housing 4 All) with the support of PPR, found that the reality for destitute asylum seekers was very different to the picture portrayed by government. A survey conducted by Housing 4 All, between October and December 2015, found that:

• 63% had been homeless more than once since arriving in NI

• 87% said their living situation adversely impacts on their physical and mental health

• 77% had approached social services for help with accommodation, but no one found the support offered sufficient to meet their needs

• 93% had approaches local charities for assistance but only 5% said the support offered was sufficient to meet their housing need.

Asylum seekers in Northern Ireland are not entitled to be on the social housing waiting list or to receive housing benefit. Accommodation support provided by the Home Office can be withdrawn at any point at which an asylum seeker’s claim for asylum is refused. When this happens they are rendered homeless for periods ranging from a number of weeks to years.

Asylum seekers cannot work or access benefits so they are also effectively barred from accessing private rental accommodation or emergency accommodation or support through homeless hostels. While social services have a statutory duty to provide support to people who are at risk of homelessness and are vulnerable, in practice most asylum seekers find this support impossible to access.

The Home Office has proposed a number of regressive measures which would have the effect of further restricting the already almost non-existent support provided for destitute asylum seekers.

The situation of destitute asylum seekers is not addressed by the NI Executive in key, strategic policy frameworks such as its homelessness strategy or its racial equality strategy, despite the fact that the devolved administration does have obligations under ICESCR to fulfil the right to housing for this group of vulnerable people.

The Housing 4 All group has developed a set of proposals on measures the NI Executive should introduce without delay to address the situation of destitute asylum seekers. These include a) the removal of any legislative, policy or funding barriers preventing homeless hostel providers from providing accommodation for destitute asylum seekers and b) the provision of a social services assessment to establish the nature and extent of support required before asylum seekers are knowingly made homeless.

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