Debate contribution: Housing Emergency

Debate contribution by Ms Cara Hunter on 15 October 2024.

MLA

Ms Cara Hunter

Party at the time

Social Democratic and Labour Party

Date

15 October 2024

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Opposition Business

Heading

Housing Emergency

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4592873

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Most of us in the Chamber are fortunate enough to have a home of our own. It is the place where we feel safe, comfortable and grounded. It is the foundation on which we build our lives and raise our families and the place that embeds us in our community. Simply put, it is fundamental for a happy life and a life well lived. Yet for too many in Northern Ireland, and in my constituency of East Derry, a safe and affordable home is a dream. For them, it is out of reach, and as the dream slips out of reach, we risk breaching the social contract that we have in this place to provide for each and every constituent and offer them a good standard of living. Everyone in our society has a rightful expectation to have a home in which they can feel safe — a home that brings them stability and where they can grow while staying tethered to their community. However, the writing is on the wall, and Northern Ireland is in the middle of a housing crisis. As of June this year, there were over 45,000 people across the North on the Housing Executive's waiting list. Research from Ulster University showed that private rental stock has shrunk by 50% over the past seven years. The Simon Community has also noted that a staggering 26,000 households are legally classified as homeless, with over 4,500 children, which I find heartbreaking. Thousands more people are deemed to be in housing stress: in other words, in desperate need of a home. I am sure that, like mine, all our constituency offices are inundated with immensely stressed people who are desperately trying to secure a home as they struggle with feelings of hopelessness and anxiety in their quest to find a place to live, and many of them have children. In my time as an MLA, I have come across many homeless people who have children with complex, special or physical needs. In one awful case in my constituency, there was an incredible single mother, who has two children with a variety of needs, and they live in their grandmother's living room. You can imagine the lived experience of those children: they cannot invite people back to their home, they cannot play in the home and there is no suitable garden. Those are the times when memories of your childhood are made. That is something that I really recall, and I am doing all that I can to find that lovely family a home. To underline the rapidly deteriorating situation, data from PropertyPal shows that the average number of enquiries per rental property during the pandemic was just 19, but it has now rocketed to 89, and my constituents are no strangers to that fact, given that we are in the Causeway Coast and Glens council area. After years of chronic failure from the Executive to get a grip on the issue of housing in the North, there is no longer any time to waste. Indeed, the circumstances that we find ourselves in are so dire that homelessness and housing insecurity in Northern Ireland have been noted as an issue of concern by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. The committee has highlighted particular concerns about households with dependent children, many of whom are young children and infants, living with family in temporary accommodation. Whilst we are acutely conscious of the crisis facing our healthcare system, as was discussed during Question Time, and the environment, the truth is that our housing situation is equally as awful and must be prioritised immediately. I argue that if you do not have access to a home, it is very hard to have a stable life. I will draw attention to a particular issue in my constituency, which includes the north coast. We have particular challenges with second-home ownership, which is spiralling out of control. We have no formal register of how those homes are being used and virtually no mechanisms to prevent them from ending up in the hands of the wealthy few to be used as holiday homes, while normal people — my constituents — struggle each and every day to find a place to raise their children. It is crazy, and not keeping data on it is a huge gap and loophole in our law. Causeway Coast and Glens Borough Council estimates that up to 50% of properties in Portballintrae and 31% in Cushendun are second homes. Those figures give an understanding of how Airbnbs and holiday lets impact on local properties. Currently, there are over 1,000 properties listed as holiday homes, which eats into the availability of housing for parents, families and young professionals. I note that people I went to school with cannot afford a home because the price of houses has gone through the roof. Those people lose their sense of community and there is no craic because nobody can afford to live there. It is really important that we — the Executive and Members across the House — note that housing is the number-one issue. We desperately need investment in it. We definitely need to regard housing as an absolute priority.

867 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 11:26 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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