Two years of PPR’s housing clinics have seen repeated requests for help from private tenants facing eviction, unaffordable rent rises or conditions ranging from the unsuitable to the unbearable:

“I live at the above property with my wife and my two very small children [details redacted]. I have received notice from my landlord that he is selling our home, and that we are being evicted” (complaint letter, Feb 2025)

“We have been renting this house for the last [redacted] years… After years of ignoring our pleas for repairs, and of just leaving us alone to cope with the mould and damp as best we could, the management company have now informed us that the landlord wants the property empty … They have given us notice to quit. We have also been told verbally that we will not be able to afford to live in the property again once the works are completed, so returning here will not be an option for us in the future.” (complaint letter, January 2025)

In preparing to implement this FRA recommendation, the DFC and Housing Executive are asserting that they can end their obligations towards some of our society’s most at-risk people by placing them in private sector tenancies, if (as-yet-unspecified) conditions are met.

Given all of the information at their disposal, how can housing authorities propose placing homeless people into under-regulated, insecure private rentals and calling this ‘duty discharged’?

Meanwhile in October 2025 the Simon Community NI reported on the ‘significantly higher levels of trauma and disadvantage’ found amongst people living in homeless hostels here, observing that:

“for many, homelessness is not rare or short-lived. It begins with childhood adversity and returns again and again in adulthood” (p. 4)

Given all of the information at their disposal, how can housing authorities propose placing homeless people into under-regulated, insecure private rentals and calling this ‘duty discharged’?

The roots of this idea are in a 2009 consultation that is no longer available except via Freedom of Information. In its 2010 report of responses the then Department for Social Development acknowledged that regulation of the private rented sector needed to be strengthened before any move to discharge the homelessness duty there, and that “safeguards and guarantees around suitability of accommodation” would need to be put in place, including potentially through legislation.

It is not clear whether the later Department for Communities agreed; its 2017 consultation document asserted that “there have been many improvements in [private sector] regulation since 2010” (p. 16) and failed to mention any planned statutory changes. For its part, in its 2017 consultation response PPR highlighted the continuing precarious situation of private tenants with regard to security of tenure, rent control and lack of regulation of either property conditions or management standards.

When the DFC’s consultation Outcomes Report emerged in 2020, it acknowledged the issues raised (p. 28) -- but recommended forging ahead anyway, albeit via an ‘initial scoping exercise to consider the practicalities … and the safeguards which may be required’ (p. 32). PPR requested the outcomes of this exercise through Freedom of Information but the DFC claimed that it was exempt on grounds of ‘policy development’.

PPR’s November 2025 analysis of the FRA proposals shows that despite recent advances around notice to quit periods, frequency of rent increases and provision of smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, huge gaps in protections for private renters remain. Communities Minister Lyons appears to have ignored a February 2025 motion passed by the NI Assembly that called for a ‘new deal for private renters’, to include

“a considered system of third-generation rent controls, a ban on no-fault evictions, legislation to make open-ended tenancies the norm for private tenants, creation of a statutory housing ombudsman, measures to boost the supply of affordable rental properties, a review of minimum fitness standards and enforcement in the private rented sector, legislation to extend the threatened with homelessness window and the introduction of a grant to provide meaningful support to help renters facing a shortfall between local housing allowance and market rent.”

This proposal, like others from the Fundamental Review, is a reversal of the Housing Executive’s foundational commitment to provide social housing on the basis of objective need

It appears the Assembly isn’t convinced the private rental sector is a safe pair of hands either.

This proposal, like others from the Fundamental Review, is a reversal of the Housing Executive’s foundational commitment to provide social housing on the basis of objective need: if people without a roof over their heads no longer have even the promise of an eventual social home, then who does? The change would shorten the waiting list by removing homeless applicants from it, without ensuring that their new home is a permanent one and that they won’t be back on the books again in short order. It is a failure in housing authorities’ duty towards the most vulnerable of all of us, and one which risks causing further harm to those least equipped to withstand it.