Homelessness in Northern Ireland has grown far faster than the housing system built to respond to it, and the scale now sits squarely with the Department for Communities and the committee that scrutinises it.
The number of Full Duty Applicants, people the Housing Executive is legally required to house under the Housing (Northern Ireland) Order 1988, rose 156.5% between March 2014 and March 2026, from 24,729 to 63,426. Households in housing stress climbed 85.2% over the same period, from 39,064 to 72,352. By 31 March 2026, 91,986 people sat on the Housing Executive’s waiting list, a 24% rise on 2014 figures. Official statistics likely understate the true picture: the Simon Community estimates around 23,000 people experience hidden homelessness, sofa surfing or living in overcrowded conditions without contact with support services, an estimate FactCheckNI has validated as credible.
The cost of managing the crisis has escalated alongside it. Temporary accommodation spending rose from £5.8 million in 2018/19 to an estimated £40 million in 2024/25, as households were placed in hotels, B&Bs, crash facilities and short-term lets. Communities Minister Gordon Lyons has approved a Housing Executive plan to buy up to 600 homes over three years for use as temporary accommodation, a move projected to cut costs by £75 million over seven years.
The underlying drivers sit on the supply side. New housing completions fell from 13,222 in 2005 to 5,848 in 2025, even as the population grew by 200,122 over the same period. Belfast rents rose from £885 to £1,162 a month between January 2023 and December 2025, and standardised house prices nearly doubled over the past decade, from £104,989 to £195,936. Property Pal recorded an average of 52 enquiries per advertised rental property in the final quarter of 2025, close to 60% above historical norms.
The 15,905 homelessness presentations recorded in 2024/25 point to causes well beyond a simple shortage of stock. The largest single reason, cited in 24.7% of cases, was accommodation no longer being reasonable to occupy, followed by family disputes or breakdowns in shared living arrangements at 22.8% and loss of rented accommodation at 16.0%. Domestic abuse accounted for 7.6% of presentations, close to four a day. Of the 10,852 households accepted as homeless, a third were families, and pensioner households made up 17.5%, a reminder that the pressure extends well beyond the single working-age adults often associated with rough sleeping. Seventy per cent of people who present as homeless report a mental health diagnosis, a burden that falls on health and social care services as much as on housing ones.
Housing sits within the Department for Communities’ remit, alongside welfare, social security and tackling poverty, with oversight resting with the Committee for Communities. The department’s response so far includes the Housing Executive’s Complex Lives Model, a multi-agency approach for people with addiction and complex needs, and the Youth Homelessness Action Plan published in November 2024. The Department for Communities‘ legislative programme also includes the Housing (Amendment) Bill, currently at First Stage, though its provisions are separate from the temporary accommodation and supply pressures set out here. The Housing Executive’s current strategy sets a target of homelessness being “rare, brief and nonrecurring,” a standard the scale of these figures suggests is still some distance away.
Data sources: figures and analysis in this piece draw on “Homelessness in Northern Ireland“, published 23 June 2026 by Ray Russell for Research Matters, the blog of the NI Assembly’s Research and Information Service (RaISe).