Standing Stones Lodge, a recently developed tourist complex consisting of guest rooms, cabins, and glamping pods is one of the many private businesses benefiting from the housing crisis. Sitting high up in the Belfast Hills alongside Divis Mountain, this peaceful holiday destination has become a nightmare for the homeless families accommodated here by NIHE.

Since the start of 2024, PPR has supported six homeless families to make official complaints about the accommodation at Standing Stones Lodge. In this ‘temporary’ non-standard accommodation, families have no access to cooking facilities and cannot afford to eat in the hotel restaurant every day. Who among us could, especially while trying to survive on Universal Credit? There are no laundry facilities available, and families must walk for 25 minutes down a dangerous high-speed road with no footpath to reach the nearest bus stop to travel to work, school and college each day.

If all this was not challenging enough, over the spring and summer tourist season some families were required to leave Standing Stones at the weekend so that the hotel could accept bookings from tourists during peak times. NIHE told families they were powerless to stop Standing Stones Lodge from doing this, offering them instead the choice of accommodation outside of Belfast for the weekend or to make their own arrangements.

In contrast with the failure of statutory organisations to support homeless families appropriately, the local community has rallied together magnificently

In contrast with the failure of statutory organisations to support homeless families appropriately, the local community has rallied together magnificently, organising rotas to provide children with lifts to school and opening their homes and community centres to enable families to cook and do laundry. These acts of kindness make ordinary life more possible for homeless families. Despite the incredible community support, the precarity of temporary accommodation and the seemingly endless wait for a home takes a huge toll on these families.

Last week, one of these families contacted PPR to say they had been asked to leave their accommodation at Standing Stones Lodge, just a few hours after trying to film for a documentary about their experience of finding a home in Belfast.

The family, who have already been moved between Belfast, Fermanagh and Newry by the NIHE, were telling their story to a documentary maker for a Belfast Film Festival production. They reported that when the documentary maker arrived, Standing Stones Lodge refused to allow filming. The family and film maker respected this decision and went elsewhere to film. They then received a phone call from the NIHE to say they had to leave their accommodation at Standing Stones.

This disproportionate response, against a family who wanted to speak out about homelessness, is a clear example of how people are intimidated into silence. Meting out this treatment to one family sends a clear signal to others - don’t complain or the same could happen to you.

The NIHE has told the BBC that it is “investigating the circumstances.” Meanwhile, the inadequacy and unsuitability of the site as a temporary accommodation appears to remain beyond their scrutiny.

The reliance on non-standard accommodation like Standing Stones Lodge has increased drastically since 2020, around 151%

It would be unfair to imply that Standing Stones Lodge is unique. According to NIHE’s own figures for 2023/24, there were 11,368 placements in temporary accommodation across the north, costing £34.4million in that year alone. The reliance on non-standard accommodation like Standing Stones Lodge has increased drastically since 2020, around 151%.  PPR often receives complaints about the quality and suitability of these temporary accommodations.

The issue is also not unique to the NIHE. Other hotel groups in the north,  including the Andras Group which owns the franchise on a number of famous brands, have made millions from servicing the requirements of Mears Group PLC, itself a profit-making enterprise, as part of the UK Home Office accommodation contract. Challenges for people seeking asylum in contingency hotels in the north have been well-documented. The Andras group is now buying up sites for additional hotel accommodation in the city centre.

None of this should come as any surprise given that the number of homeless households has been steadily rising against the backdrop of the Department for Communities and the NIHE failing to build social homes at the scale, pace and location needed - whilst also selling off huge percentages of its social housing stock, at least a quarter of which are now private rental properties.

We are now caught in a vicious circle. All this money, which should be spent providing safe, suitable homes for homeless families, is instead spent lining the pockets of hotel owners and private landlords who will only ever act in the interests of profit. But there should be an expectation that what they provide will be of an adequate quality, and that homeless families who have been through so much, are treated with dignity. Without a swift and decisive intervention to allocate public money as capital to build good quality homes, this Catch 22 will become never-ending.

Take action NOW to support Moheand, his wife and three children in their demand for appropriate accommodation!