Remember me
The owner of a number of Houses of Multiple Occupancy (HMOs) and a local businessman has spoken out after a number of properties were attacked in east Belfast last week.
Attacks took place on a number of properties near Templemore Avenue in the early hours of last Tuesday and saw windows smashed and graffiti daubed on houses where young children had been sleeping.
Several well-known anti-immigration protesters have been behind a campaign in recent weeks in which a number of anti-HMO demonstrations have been organised.
An event due to take place last Thursday at Windsor Park by local property investment advice business Belfast Property Meet was cancelled by the Irish Football Association due to “security reasons” after a protest was planned to take place outside the stadium.
A HMO is a property lived in by three or more people from three or more separate households who share facilities like a kitchen.
Chris Selwood, who owns Belfast Property Meet with his wife and is also the chair of Ballymena United Football Club, told the Irish News his family have been subject to a campaign of intimidation in recent weeks, with some of the properties he owns targeted with criminal damage.
A property in the Templemore Avenue area of east Belfast has been daubed with anti-HMO graffiti and had its windows smashed PICTURE: BRIAN LINCOLN Mr Selwood said he had helped his daughter try to rent out rooms in her home and had applied for a HMO license, and his daughter’s details were later published online while she received phone calls asking whether she had been “housing illegal immigrants”.
“They have been targeting us with this, and it’s wrong. The campaign of intimidation has been stepped up,” Mr Selwood said.
“They are spray painting houses, they are smashing windows. They are putting hammers through windows.
“A friend of ours rented a house for a few months while his own house was getting fixed up. He rented a house from a guy who had planning permission for a HMO, but wasn’t actually running it as a HMO.
“They were lying in bed the other night, half one in the morning, hammer through the window, showered with glass. Him and his wife had to pull the duvet over their heads, and two young children lying in a room above.
“They could have just as well put the hammer through the window with the kids lying asleep there.
“When is it going to stop? When somebody gets hurt?
“They say they are protecting women and children, but yet they are putting hammers through windows in houses with women and children asleep in their bed.”
A property in the Templemore Avenue area of east Belfast has been daubed with anti-HMO graffiti and had its windows smashed PICTURE: BRIAN LINCOLN The Ballymena businessman said he believes he first came to the attention of the anti-immigration network shortly after his hometown erupted with racist violence last year. He says he has also been a target for dissident republican groups in the past.
“I think it started after the Ballymena stuff last year, where the narrative was put out that people are housing asylum seekers and illegal immigrants, of which the people accused in Ballymena at the time were neither.
“But of course, they were different coloured people, different cultures and it suited the narrative to create something that wasn’t quite true. There was a suggestion those accused of that crime at the time lived in a HMO, but they didn’t.
“There was a connection made there that never existed and it just suited people to carry on with that.
“Nobody is housing illegal immigrants, because you have to check they have the right to legal abode in the UK or Ireland before you can rent the property to them.
“Let’s be honest, I’m sure there are landlords out there who rent property who aren’t adhering to those rules.
“But they blame us because we are an easy target. We’re now seen as bogeymen because we’re teaching people how to do it.”
Mr Selwood argues that an increasing number of HMOs in certain areas of Belfast are contributing to the local economy and helping to regenerate local communities, something at odds with the messaging of anti-HMO protests.
“They say that they are trying to stop HMOs to protect their local community, if five Afghan warriors move in. This is the stupidity of it, that HMOs are housing young men of fighting age, armed to the teeth and our communities aren’t safe.
Riot police vans at Clonavon Terrace in Ballymena last summer (Niall Carson/PA) “That’s not the case. It’s young people from Northern Ireland, the south of Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales. They are here to work in Citibank and PWC and the Ulster Hospital.
“It’s all young people that are doing jobs that are contributing to the local community by bringing in money that isn’t quite there at the moment.
“Apparently we are not allowed a voice. We’re scumbags they say, but we’re not the ones damaging any property or breaking any laws – we’re abiding by the laws.”
Meanwhile, on Saturday hundreds of people turned out to a protest in Coleraine over immigration concerns.
The event was billed as the launch of a movement called Our Northern Ireland Voice.
It calls for stopping HMOs, closing “migrant hotels”, deporting all illegal immigrants immediately and keeping “our children safe”.
Around 200 people heard speakers outside Coleraine Town Hall, while trade union members staged a counter protest nearby.
Speakers included Richard Inman, an organiser for far-right activist Tommy Robinson, who told those assembled of a “spiritual battle” against a “great evil that has come upon these islands in the last 50 years”.
