Debate contribution: Housing: North Belfast

Debate contribution by Ms Carál Ní Chuilín on 9 April 2024.

MLA

Ms Carál Ní Chuilín

Party at the time

Sinn Féin

Date

9 April 2024

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Adjournment

Heading

Housing: North Belfast

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4482292

Read the official Assembly record

Text

A LeasCheann Comhairle, can we wait for a couple of minutes to allow the Communities Minister to arrive? We are at least an hour early. Is that possible?

Thank you, a LeasCheann Comhairle. For your benefit, Minister, I did not want to start until you were here, so I asked for us to wait for a couple of minutes. I put on record my appreciation of your being here. I suspect that this is an issue that you are very interested in. I know that your party colleague Phillip Brett is, and, when Brian is here, he will be as well. I see that you have at least one of your officials there: David Polley. He will probably have you well briefed on housing statistics. North Belfast is normally in the top three or four areas of greatest housing stress. I think that the concern for us all is that, as well as housing supply, there are many issues, but it is certainly about getting enough land to build houses where they are needed. Every part of the constituency needs homes. It is not just the part that I represent, live in or whatever; it is accepted that the need is everywhere. I think that my colleagues from North Belfast will appreciate that there are stubborn parts of North Belfast that have not meaningfully shifted. I hope that we take a collegial approach to that. One of the issues that have exercised many people across most, but not all, of the parties in Belfast City Council is the emergence of many managed student accommodation blocks. Initially, when we asked, for example, Ulster University and Queen's University — it was less Queen's and more Ulster — about the need for student beds in the city centre, they told us that it was 1,500. That figure has gone up to 15,000. I know that because I attended planning appeals against managed student accommodation in Union Street. Those were the figures that were put on the record. There was not only a perception but a belief that any available land in that area had been earmarked under different housing strategies for potential social housing. When I was CAL Minister, we looked at whether land behind the central library could run contiguously. We wanted to use the "Public land for public housing" approach, where we could try to bring pockets of land together for housing. That was not achieved, certainly with DCAL, but it certainly was in terms of plot 8, which was DFC's, and the Belfast City Council piece of land in that area, which is now the strategic site assessment. The context is that any bit of land that could be used for development — there is a need for older people's housing, folds and different things— is gobbled up by private developers. We are asking for the Department, along with the Housing Executive but under your leadership in the Department, to be the advocate for housing need across our part of the constituency. You have probably seen the figures, because I asked the questions. In North Belfast, there are around 4,400 applicants on the housing waiting list. Those figures are from 2022-23. A total of 3,479 are deemed to be living in housing stress, yet the estimate is that just 655 homes have been built. Ironically and disappointingly, they are not always in the areas of the constituencies that we represent. We are glad that those houses are built; we are just saying that they are not enough, and they are certainly not in the areas of greatest demand. In relation to housing in North Belfast — I know that colleagues have experienced this across the piece — you would have had the potential of a supply coming from the private rented sector. That is not the case any more. In fact, I dealt with a constituent last Friday who works in the Mater Hospital and is paying almost £900 per month for accommodation in north Belfast. She is having to leave. She was successful in getting accommodation elsewhere, but she considers herself to be a member of the Catholic community and her kids go to secondary school, and the affordable property was in an area where children would not go to Catholic post-primary schools. She is concerned. It is not to say that people are deliberately setting out. She is rearing grown-up teenagers, and she is just concerned. Do you know what the difference in rent is? £450 per month. There are lots of reasons why the supply has not been maintained. Some landlords just cannot afford it. If it is a family home, they are selling it on; for others, it is just not the market for them. I have spoken to, I think, every housing association about whether they had approached the Department or, in particular, the Housing Executive to ask whether they had land or whether they could go into joint ventures with other housing associations in the provision of social housing in North Belfast. As with everything, if you get a lot of people in one room, they have a list of demands. The issue and the opportunity for us is whether we can explore the local development plans (LDPs) coming from the councils. That will be the biggest change in planning policy for probably a generation, but there may be opportunities through that. Percentage limits were put on people buying a home, whereby a percentage of those homes could be social and vice versa. However, there are opportunities for what private developers and housing associations can do under the LDP. I know that councils do not have development powers — those powers were removed over 50 years ago — but I would like the Department to explore what can be done with local government, with all the equality protections that are there with the common selection scheme. To be frank, we are running out of land and road in North Belfast. There are three and four generations now living under one roof, and it is horrible. It is horrible for the kids, and it is horrible for the families. I know that the Minister's officials will say something different about this. It is not that they are disagreeable — I have had this out with them, and they disagree — but housing associations tell me that the amendment of article 15 of the Housing Order 1992 prevents them from building homes for sale. They are saying that, if they could build homes for sale within their envelope of providing social houses, they could put that back in and that could be used for a bigger pot.

Some can borrow additional money, but it always comes back to a lack of land, so, even if they had the money, housing associations are not getting enough land. We therefore may need to look at vesting. I ask the Minister and his officials not so much to look at vesting, because it is always a last resort, but to have discussions with Belfast City Council and Antrim and Newtownabbey Borough Council and with other councils on the outskirts of North Belfast, or with the Belfast Harbour Commissioners, to see what else we can do.

I declare an interest. When I was Minister for Communities, I put this in my housing statement of November 2020. We looked at potentially ring-fencing areas of highest need. We did so to try to build homes in order to reduce homelessness. It is not an artificial way of doing so, because it works. Doing that had been removed by the SDLP Minister in 2010 and 2011. Minister, if you can, I also want you to look at different ways in which we can try to relieve homelessness. It may mean holding a summit or pooling the best brains to look at what we can do. I do not want anyone to be trotting up to the courts to try to get a judicial review of why people have been on the housing waiting list for four years. Legally, anyone would be perfectly entitled to do that. If the Executive were to go to court, however, and say, "I hear what you are saying, but there is nothing that we can do", that is not something that any of us wants on our watch. I will leave it there.

1,395 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

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