Some 10,000 families – the vast majority of them believed to be Catholic – have been intimidated from their homes in the North since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, according to new figures. However, the figures – compiled by the Belfast-based investigative website Detail Data – may be much higher since many incidents allegedly go upreported to the authorities.
Between 2012/13 and 2016/17 alone a total of 2,060 incidents of housing intimidation were accepted by the region’s Housing Executive. The Executive spent £6.7million (€7.6million) buying 57 houses from homeowners forced out of their property by paramilitary activity, sectarianism or because of their race, sexual orientation or disability. The executive also paid out £808,174 (€918,776) in emergency grants to more than 1,000 householders who had to move from their rented homes.
However, court figures obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show just 32 convictions were secured for the offence of “intimidation – causing person to leave residence/occupation” between March 2011 and August 2016.
The location of many of the reported incidents suggests the involvement of loyalist paramilitaries – a sample of data from the past two years showed the overwhelming majority were recorded in Belfast, Lisburn and Castlereagh, Ards and North Down and the Antrim and Newtownabbey council areas. The PSNI does not record housing intimidation in its own right, rather including it in an overarching category encompassing all forms of intimidation offences.