Communities Minister Gordon Lyons has pledged to “shortly” seek Stormont executive approval for a draft housing strategy – some two-and-a-half years after his predecessor launched a similar set of proposals.
Sinn Féin’s Deirdre Hargey announced tentative plans to build 100,000 homes over 15 years in December 2023, however, the paper was shelved after the DUP collapsed the institutions weeks later.
Mr Lyons’ commitment to table a fresh strategy comes as the representative body for housing professionals warns that the regional housing crisis is “reaching a breaking point”. The plan will be subject to a three-month public consultation.
Justin Cartwright, regional director of the Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH) said the development of new homes was being hindered by a “complex web of challenges”, including constraints on land availability and limitations in water infrastructure.
“The supply of housing is failing to keep pace with the growing demand, leading to escalating prices and making it increasingly difficult for people to find affordable places to live,” he told The Irish News.
“While social housing targets were met in 2023/24, the drastic budget cut for the Social Housing Development Programme in 2024/25 raises serious concerns.”
Mr Cartwright said only 400 new social homes were planned for the year, which he claimed represented a “staggering 73 per cent decrease compared with the previous year”.
He said the housing crisis “is set to worsen”.
“The Department for Communities’ housing supply strategy, published in 2021, offers a potential roadmap to address these structural barriers and boost housing supply, however, the collapse of the executive delayed its finalisation,” the CIH director said.
“It is imperative that the government prioritises the completion and implementation of this strategy – we call for executive endorsement of the strategy, recognising that housing issues cut across multiple departments, including communities, infrastructure and finance.”
SDLP communities spokesperson Daniel McCrossan said at current house building rates it would take “250 years to hit the 100,000 target”.
“For the 47,000 households on housing waiting lists and the families struggling to get on the housing ladder empty aspiration will provide little solace,” he said.
“We need to the minister to work with the Housing Executive to empower them to begin an ambitious house building programme, while also looking at other creative options like a vacant land tax to stop land banking and punish those who buy up sites and leave them dormant, while also looking at how we address the many properties currently lying empty across the north.”
A spokesperson for the Department for Communities said: “The minister had made the draft housing supply strategy a priority and it is currently being finalised with the view to securing executive approval shortly.
“This follows a period of additional work to refresh the draft 2022 strategy to ensure that it remains accurate and relevant.”
