988 present as homeless after losing private digs

The Housing Executive reported receiving 988 homeless presentations between 2017/18 and 2020/21 in Derry/Strabane, Communities Minister Deirdre Hargey confirmed in response to an Assembly Question.

Broken down by financial year the local homelessness presentations were as follows: 2017/18 (204); 2018/19 (332); 2019/20 (268); and 2020/21 (184).

Since 2018/19 the Housing Executive has also been providing sub-category breakdowns of the various reasons for losses of private rented accommodation suffered by tenants in the Derry and Strabane city and district.

These include affordability, fitness/repairs, landlord disputes, ‘other’ and property sales.

In 2020/21 in Derry/Strabane the breakdown was as follows: affordability (23), fitness/repairs (7), landlord disputes (21), ‘other’ (41) and property sales (92).

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Property sales were the main reason for homeless ness presentations due to the loss of private rented accommodation in each of the past three years in the Derry/Strabane area.

This was reflected generally in the six counties.

Across the north as a whole, 8,717 households in total presented to the Housing Executive as homeless after losing private rental tenancies between 2017/18 and 2020/21.

In 2020/21, 636 of these households said they had lost tenancies due to the sale of the property they were living in previously.

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