The Department for Communities is currently conducting an Equality Impact Assessment (EQIA) of its 2024/25 budget, including its proposed 400 social housing builds.
People Before Profit urge a response to the consultation calling on the Department for Communities (DfC) Minister and Stormont Executive to initiate a mass social and affordable housing build to address housing scarcity.
The planned social housing build of only 400 or 500 homes across the entire North, while 500 social housing units are sold off, will further compound the housing crisis.
There are more than 6000 Derry families and individuals on the waiting list alone.
Details for the consultation can be found here: https://consultations.nidirect.gov.uk/dfc/eqia-on-dfc-budget-for-2024-25/
People Before Profit Cllr Shaun Harkin said,
“Stormont’s housing plan for the year ahead represent utter failure.
We need to send the DfC Minister and the Stormont Executive a clear message they are failing their statutory responsibility of ‘ensuring the availability of good quality and affordable housing’.
Almost 50,000 families and individuals, more than 6000 in Derry alone, are trapped on the housing waiting list and grappling with unaffordable rental costs.
The DfC Minister is currently conducting an Equality Impact Assessment (EQIA) on his Department’s 2024/25 budget that includes funding for the building of a meagre 400 social homes across the entire North.
Department officials confirmed they expect 500 social houses to be sold-off in the coming year. This will mean the number of social homes will be static or actually down.
This will put huge pressure on Housing Executive, housing associations and frontline workers.
It will result in housing scarcity deepening, leaving more families and individuals facing homelessness and struggling with unaffordable rental and mortgage costs.
It must be underscored again and again that this crisis was created by Westminster and Stormont, not by migrants, not by asylum seekers.
Decades of government led privatisation of housing stock and lack of investment in new builds along with the infrastructure for it are responsible for affordable housing scarcity and rising rental costs.
The consultation is an opportunity to make clear demands on the Stormont Executive for an urgent mass build of thousands of social and affordable homes; for rental cost regulation; and for the social housing sell-off to end.”
