A BELFAST based human rights organisation have expressed concern over a lack of social housing being built.

Seán Mac Brádaigh from Participation and the Practice of Rights (PPR) said the group were worried that on average only 941 houses are being built across the North every year as the housing waiting list continues to grow. 

“At PPR we’re constantly analysing data as a human rights organisation and we’ve recently uncovered that despite changes in Ministers and Permanent Secretaries only an average of 941 homes have been built a year and that average dropped last year. That is for the whole of the North and for a waiting list of almost 45,000 people.

“If we continue at this rate it will take at least another 50 years to accommodate those who are currently on the waiting list. We are concerned that this figure isn’t being talked about and why the target for homes to be built hasn’t increased.”

Seán also said another big concern was new changes to the waiting lists which he claimed would see people taken off the waiting list without actually having been housed.

“There are also a whole range of changes to the Department for Communities and the Housing Executive which will see people being removed from the waiting lists, without building new homes. The measures will make it harder for people to remain on the waiting list, the number of offers you receive will be reduced. There will also be stricter measures on allocations. They’re changing how areas of choice will work, it’s a whole suite of policy changes which are currently being consulted on.

“Our main concern is that these changes aren’t about providing additional homes, they’re about reducing the waiting lists. Reducing the waiting list without providing homes just masks the problem.”

OPERA: The Nobody/Somebody Opera was held recently based on PPR's work with the Take Back the City campaign
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OPERA: The Nobody/Somebody Opera was held recently based on PPR's work with the Take Back the City campaign

PPR have identified the 25 acre publicly owned Mackie’s site, which is owned by the Department for Communities as a site to fulfil housing need.

“If sites like that aren’t being identified to bring forward new social housing, then what are we doing?” he added.

Seán said part of the changes also included changing the definition of what constituted social housing, which is now referred to as ‘social and affordable housing’. PPR have been concerned with these changes as the new definition doesn’t designate how many of the new houses will be social and how many will be affordable.

“It’s more to do with providing greater opportunities for the private sector. When you see a housing site designated as containing social and affordable housing there’s no copper-fast targets contained to stipulate how many of those will actually be social housing, and the number would be at the mercy of the private developers.”

Seán also claimed that the Housing Executive have introduced reporting restrictions on freedom of information requests on housing stats which PPR previously received on a yearly basis.

A Housing Executive spokesperson said: “Waiting list figures are now published in the quarterly Housing Bulletin produced by the Department for Communities (DfC).  

“As this publication is a National Statistics publication, statutory rules apply to the release of any statistics within it and we must follow Section T3: Orderly Release of the Code of Practice for Statistics, namely, that the statistics cannot be released until they are published in the bulletin.

“The next Housing Bulletin, which will contain the figures at 31 March 2023, will be published on 25 May on the Department for Communities website. We have explained this to the organisation concerned.

“Meanwhile, we have provided them with the latest publicly available statistics, which date from December 2022.”