Rioters used HMO ‘hit list’ to target migrants

Rioters used a publicly available ‘hit list’ of HMO properties to target immigrants during disorder that followed a knife attack allegedly committed by a Sudanese man last June.

That’s what Causeway Coast and Glens councillors were told on Tuesday before agreeing to back permanent suspension of public access to the online register.

The riots of June 9 began after footage of a brutal knife attack was widely circulated on social media.

Dozens of people were left homeless after their properties were attacked and set on fire.

On Tuesday, during a meeting of Causeway Coast and Glens Environmental Services Committee, members heard that “several” HMOs (Houses of Multiple Occupancy) had been targeted.

An HMO is a single property in which three or more households share amenities. They are often associated with students but, in recent months, have been the focus of far right activists who claim they are used to house asylum seekers and other migrants.

On June 10 officers from Belfast City Council, who administer an HMO licencing scheme on behalf of councils across Northern Ireland, removed the register from its website “as a precautionary measure”

The committee heard a list of HMO addresses, where it was claimed that immigrants were living, had been circulated on social media – an act described by police as “totally unacceptable”

The PSNI went on to state that anyone who’d shared the list may have been committing a criminal offence.

It wasn’t only the police who were concerned over the sharing of the list, councillors heard.

In the wake of the riots Mears Housing, the company contracted by the Home Office to find accommodation for asylum seekers, requested a suspension of public access “on the grounds that the information was being used to target migrant and asylum seeker accommodation”.

The committee report went on to state: “Mears believed that a failure to do so would be likely to jeopardise the safety or welfare of the occupants / HMO owners and managers or the security of the HMO accommodation.

It was the Landlords Association for Northern Ireland that described the register as a “hit list” according to the committee report.

“They stated that HMO properties ‘have been identified and circulated online in a manner that has encouraged hostility towards occupants. This has caused serious alarm and required police involvement’.”

On Tuesday councillors were asked to weigh arguments for and against reinstating public access to the list.

On the one hand they have a duty to promote accountability and transparency.

On the other hand the list had been “linked by police to anti-immigrant attacks.”

In the end councillors unanimously agreed the officer recommendation not to reinstate general public access but to review the situation annually.

“It’s a shame to have to do it, but keeping people safe is much more important,” said Alliance Party Councillor Lee Kane.