PPR noted the 13 May 2026 response from the Communities Minister to MLA Mark Durkan's question AQW44902/22-27 about the impact of non standard (emergency) temporary accommodation on children. The Communities Minister wrote,

“the Housing Executive seeks to avoid placing families with children in non-standard temporary accommodation for more than two weeks and will identify alternative options at the earliest possible opportunity.”

This did not match reports received from families enduring long stays on hotels, b&bs and other holiday accommodation.  As a result, on 15 May PPR asked the Housing Executive for the average duration of stay for families in such ‘non standard’ places; and for the same information, broken down by race / ethnicity and by religious background of the main applicant.

The Housing Executive initially replied (FOI 1185 of 2 June) that it was

“unable to provide temporary accommodation data to date in 2026 as this forms part of the Department for Communities Homelessness Bulletin which is yet to be published for this period. In line with the code of practice for statistics, we are unable to provide these figures in advance of publication.”

Since by that time the Homelessness Bulletin covering October 2025 through March 2026 had been published, PPR asked for that data instead. The Housing Executive answered on 18 August (FOI response 1309), using data from the first quarter of 2026 only. It did not provide families’ average duration of stay overall. It did however provide the following tables, with average (‘mean’) and median duration of family stays in non-standard (NS) temporary accommodation:

Clearly, the first column (average number of days in non standard accommodation using the commonly understood version of ‘average’, or mean, in which all values are added and then divided by how many values there are) gives outcomes that for the most part fail the 2-week aspiration mentioned by the Communities Minister; the ‘median’ measure (the middle value when all the values are listed in order) however does not.

The FOI response explains the rationale for providing the data in both forms:

“the median (middle value, a measure of central tendency) is less affected by outliers and represents a ‘typical’ case better when the data is skewed. By presenting both, we ensure that the analysis captures both central tendency and the potential impact of unusually high or low values. We also note that when the number of applicants is small, statistical indicators become less reliable and have a much lower predictive value regarding the ‘typical’ experience. In such cases, the figures may be more indicative of the specific circumstances of the individual households rather than a broader trend. Caution must be exercised when interpreting the results.”

So what are these ‘outliers’ ‘skewing’ the data in the above explanation?  Where the median is significantly lower than the mean, this indicates that some families in ‘specific circumstances’ are staying in emergency accommodation significantly longer than the average (thus pulling the average away from the median). For such families, the wait for even a temporary home may be very long indeed.