Some things, you don’t want to become routine. One day six years ago, around this time of year, housing organisers were talking about just how many mums with young children they were meeting during the course of their work – people pushing prams and desperate for help to get their full quota of housing points, people at their wits’ end trying to keep energetic toddlers entertained in cramped hostel bedrooms, people conscious of wearing out their (and their kids’) welcome in their own parents’ house, but genuinely at a loss as to where else to go.

We submitted a Freedom of Information request to the Housing Executive, for the number of children under the age of 18 on their waiting list and in their other categories (housing stress and Full Duty Applicant homeless). This was declined as, they stated, “it will cost more than the ‘appropriate limit’ to comply with your request”; but they said they could give the information if we paid the fee set out in their notice (37.5 hours of work at £25/hour, for a grand total of £937.50).

We followed up with the FOI team staff by email and on the phone. We explained we didn’t have the money for the fee, but that we felt somewhere in their computers they surely had this information. We explained that we were more than happy to do the leg work. They were nice people – possibly slightly perplexed as to why we were asking.

We went through our files and discovered a Housing Executive data table with household types on it, and asked could they provide the current statistics in that format.  They found that they could – and from what they sent, we worked out the minimum possible number of children in each category – ‘single male >16 and <18’. ‘Two adults & 1 child’. ‘One adult & 4+ children’ – making sure to give the Housing Executive the benefit of the doubt, and to emphasise the lowest possible end of the numbers.

From that exercise, what we found was that as of the end of March 2018 there were at least 20,950 kids in households on the waiting list. At least 13,636 of them were in households considered to be in ‘housing stress’, and at least 11,372 of these were in FDA homeless households.

What we felt was shock. Over 11,300 kids growing up in homeless households?  Who could imagine such a thing? Surely if people knew, if they heard that figure and stopped to think about it for even five seconds, they would find it absolutely unbearable and would move heaven and earth to solve what was clearly a serious housing shortage, and work to get those kids and their families homes.

Except that that didn’t happen.

One thing that did happen was that over the next few months and years the Department for Communities started including in its publications the number of children in temporary accommodation, and then in households newly recognised as homeless in any given financial quarter – a step forward, at least in terms of transparency.

But nothing much else appeared to change – no upsurge in political will to address this urgent problem, no new dedicated policy initiatives or benchmarks, no new money – no ‘champion’ even.

Then Covid happened, then the cost-of-living crisis happened, and the price of private rentals went through the roof. The waiting list surged – as of March 2024, six years on, to over 47,000 households with between them at least 27,722 children under 18. With that so did the number of those households in housing stress, and the number of kids living in them: at least 21,133.

And as for the kids growing up homeless?  That ‘at least’ figure has increased by two thirds in six years and is now in spitting distance of 19,000 – at least 18,959 kids growing up in households officially recognised as homeless.

It still doesn’t feel routine, yet for so many, it is.

So where are we now, with regard to homes for those most in need of them – the children whose lives and futures are most affected by the instability, constant stress and deprivations of homelessness?

We’ve seen budgets cut and targets fall. We’ve seen officials and politicians throw their hands up and say they wish it were different.

Well, over the last lot of months we’ve seen the number of reasonable offers families are entitled to reduced. We’ve heard of families made to do a dance to show that they’ve put down as many areas of choice as they can, and families told they must accept any offer of temporary accommodation, or risk being removed from the list altogether – even if this means taking their kids out of school and losing the vital support and stability it can provide. We’ve seen budgets cut and targets fall. We’ve seen officials and politicians throw their hands up and say they wish it were different.

What we haven’t seen is priority given to increasing the supply of social housing – particularly homes for families. And tired of not seeing any help come forward, some families have opted to do it for themselves. Their ambitious plans to build 750 homes at the Mackie’s site in West Belfast can be found here. If you’d like to take a step towards change and help give them hope of something different, you can support their plan via this link.