Belfast tenants union stages occupation of Housing Executive offices following brutal eviction

On 7 May, the Belfast branch of Community Action Tenants Union (CATU) staged an all-day sit-in at the offices of the Northern Ireland Housing Executive (NIHE). They have been protesting the housing body’s cruel eviction of a family from their West Belfast home. As a result, Caitríona McCrudden, her daughter Lisa, and Lisa’s three-year-old son Cillian were rendered homeless. Notably, this eviction has brought renewed scrutiny to housing policy in Belfast.

On their Instagram page, the CATU issued the following statement:

Today CATU occupied the Housing Executive until closing in a sit-in protest, calling for safe, secure housing for our members Caitríona, Lisa and Cillian, who were forcefully evicted last week.

The NIHE have refused to listen to our repeated calls for suitable accommodation for the family.

We’ve taken our demands in person to the Housing Executive, calling for a meeting to offer safe, secure, suitable alternative housing to Caitriona and her family.

The Police Service of Northern Ireland and masked contractors turned up at the property on 28 April and forcibly removed the family from their home. CATU activists rallied to the scene. However, they were unable to halt the eviction. Gerry Carroll, from the eco-socialist party People Before Profit, took to X to condemn the decision:

Strong turnout at Clovelly St. The community & media heard directly from the McCrudden family and @catubelfast, who've fought the Housing Executive's cruel succession policy for years.
Making families homeless to tackle waiting lists is criminal. NIHE must find them a home now. pic.twitter.com/hnSwpiydMt

— Gerry Carroll (@GerryCarrollPBP) May 1, 2026

Housing Executive excuses don’t wash

The Housing Executive, which is the authority tasked with managing public housing, claimed that under a succession policy which enables assessment at its own discretion, it can remove tenants they believe have no right to remain in a property. CATU say the McCrudden family had statutory rights, having lived in the place for decades. In addition, it was Caitríona’s mother’s residence. The case has resonated with many Belfast residents concerned about housing justice.

The union also pointed out what should be obvious to anyone with a conscience:

The Housing Executive should not be evicting anyone into homelessness.

They rightly stated that, given the discretionary nature of the decision, it was “not” — as the NHE claimed — “a last resort.”

…cruel choice to implement a harsh policy to push people out of social housing in the name of reducing waiting lists, rather than building more homes or bringing tens of thousands of empty homes back into use.

The Housing Executive made a further attempt to justify their cruelty, saying the McCrudden home:

is bungalow accommodation, which we prioritise to allocate to older people or those with additional needs who have been assessed and approved through the social housing system.

Needless to say, if there was adequate social housing, we wouldn’t be pitting a family’s right to housing against the needs of older people. CATU slammed the Housing Executive’s chronic mismanagement of housing stock, saying:

If the Housing Executive was serious about ‘properly managing its social housing stock’, it would stop selling off its best stock through the House Sale Scheme. In 1981, 2 in 5 people lived in a Housing Executive home. In 2021, it was just 1 in 10.

Right to Buy policy depleting housing stock

The problem is traceable back to the times of Margaret Thatcher. Before housing becoming a devolved matter in 1999, the Housing Executive was largely bound by Thatcher’s disastrous Right to Buy policy. That legislation saw vast amounts of social housing stock sold off to private buyers. Moreover, huge numbers of houses have been gobbled up by landlords. As a result, those landlords in and outside of Belfast now charge extortionate rents.

However, that period of enduring Westminster policy doesn’t excuse the now over 25 years of Housing Executive failure to provide adequate social housing in the north of Ireland. There are currently over 50,000 people in the region waiting to be allocated social housing. CATU demonstrators on Thursday brought placards reading “50,000 homeless, £50 million for weapons.”

This is in reference to the obscenity that is the Defence Growth Deal. Westminster is ploughing vast sums into letting the Six Counties of north Ireland to advance its machinery of death. Rather than provide basic necessities like a roof over people’s heads, this is the chosen path.

The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) cheered that catastrophe on. Furthermore, the party bear responsibility for the continued use of the House Sales Scheme, which allows the ongoing sale of social housing. DUP communities minister Gordon Lyons, whose remit includes housing, has refused to scrap the policy.

Lyons was called out by a devastated Lisa McCrudden last week, speaking in the aftermath of being turfed out of the only home she’d ever known:

To Gordon Lyons, would you allow your family and a three-year-old son be made homeless? I don’t think so.

She also referenced NIHE CEO Grainia Long:

To Grainia Long, would you allow your mother to be forcibly evicted by masked court officers and armed policemen while she has a breakdown? I don’t think so.

She concluded:

Housing is the main crisis of our time. Everyone has a right to a home. We must organise and fight and make sure that this is realised.

As our ruling classes continue to back landlordism, tenants unions are an essential means for that fightback. The Housing Executive refused a meeting request at the sit-in on Thursday, but a mass movement of renters demanding fair treatment will ultimately be impossible to ignore.

Featured image via the Canary