The budget for social housing in Derry "wouldn't put a dent" the 4,000 new homes needed in the next five years, Derry City and Strabane council has heard.
There were well over 4,000 applicants in "housing stress" in the Derry City and Strabane district in March, with over 2,000 homeless.
But "budget constraints" mean the Northern Ireland Housing Executive will fall "considerably short" of its targets for providing new homes, according to the organisation's chief executive Grainia Long.
Read more: Heavily pregnant, homeless Derry nursing student 'desperate' for help
Read more: Attack on elderly couple's home in Derry slammed by politicians
Councillors in Derry and Strabane were given a yearly update from the chief executive at a meeting earlier this week.
Grainia Long said a total of £138.07 million had been spent on social housing in the area in the past year, with millions on energy efficiency improvements to existing housing, maintenance work, and what the Housing Executive describe as "stock improvement".
She said while the budget for maintenance and stock improvements is going up - from £8.73m in 2022/23 to £9.17m during 2023/24 before rising again to £16.98m in 2025 - the "current budgetary environment" means the number of new build social homes will take a hit in the coming year.
"You will see clearly in our Housing Investment Plan update, the adverse impact the proposed budget will have on housing output in 2024/25 – particularly in the reduction in the number of new build social homes we can commission across all council areas," she told councillors.
"Last year, 260 new homes were finished in the Derry and Strabane area. Last year, there was continued investment in new-build homes in the District, with 1,449 housing association units on-site at March 2024, and 260 housing completions for the year," Ms Long said. “Budget constraints means that the new-build home programme for the coming year will fall considerably short of our targets, once more widening the gap between housing demand and supply."
SDLP councillor Rory Farrell noted that 800 new homes were needed annually across the district over the next five years, but the Northern Ireland Executive’s recent draft budget would only allow for the Department for Communities to allocate 400 homes across all of Northern Ireland every year.
He added: “So we need 4,000 homes in the next five years, but the budget location at the minute wouldn’t put a dent in the waiting list”.
“In terms of social housing there are over 1,800 homes programmed between now and 2027, are those funded? Housing associations are ready and willing to build, so we need to know [if funding is in place].”
Ms Long said funding was not in place for planned social housing developments, but any developments already underway were fully funded.
She added that DfC’s allocation had since increased from 400 to 600 homes but, as NIHE had submitted a bid for 2,000 homes in 2024/2025, the number was still “extremely disappointing”.
“The reason it’s particularly disappointing in the context of this council is that in the last three years in this council area we collectively exceeded our targets,” she added. “And when you’re going well and do anything to kind of undermine it, it’s very difficult to ramp it back up again.
“I’m very disappointed that the budget for this year gives real uncertainty to housing associations, because they have to decide how much risk they want to take.
“I’m hoping that if we receive an additional capital grant that could get us closer to that 2,000 [houses] and this year hopefully will be a blip, but there’s no question that supply this year is at risk because, it will have a knock on implication for allocations of new-build social housing next year and the year after and there’s no way around that.”
For all the latest news, visit the Belfast Live homepage here and sign up to our daily newsletter here.
English (United States) ·