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Northern Irish homelessness charity calls for ‘sustained’ funding to end crisis
A charity has called for sustained funding for tackling homelessness in Northern Ireland.
Nicola McCrudden, chief executive of Homeless Connect, told the Northern Ireland Homelessness Conference last week that there must be a “concerted effort” to tackle the crisis head-on.
The charity, which is the homelessness sector’s representative body, organised the event in south Belfast on World Homeless Day to discuss the deepening crisis and to examine practices and approaches that are working well in other countries.
Ms McCrudden said: “Northern Ireland is in the midst of a homelessness crisis, crossing the grim milestone of seeing over 30,000 households registered as homeless on the social housing waiting list.
“The number of people living in temporary accommodation has reached unprecedented levels, including over 5,000 children with no place to call home.”
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Ms McCrudden said that social housing has not been given as much focus as other areas of public policy and “for far too long people assumed we were building enough homes”.
“It is now crystal clear that we have not been building enough homes. I am pleased to see that housing and homelessness will now be a priority for the Programme for Government and this should be viewed as a fresh start,” she said.
Ms McCrudden added: “We need to think and act differently if we are to deal with the immediate crisis of temporary accommodation supply and do more to stop people from losing their homes. We need to be bold and innovative.
“We need to come up with workable solutions both short and longer term and above all else, make sure there is sustained and committed funding. This is a societal problem which can be solved, but we need concerted effort across sectors and government departments to fix it.”
Professor Paddy Gray, who led a session focused on housing solutions, said that Northern Ireland has a “particular set of problems” which need a “holistic approach”.
He said: “I firmly believe that a time-bound housing commission focusing on the whole system is the way forward.”
He added that the housing system in the country is “broken and needs to be fixed right from the core”.
“There is an urgent need for a strategic reset in housing policy given the severe housing deficit we are experiencing.”
A Department for Communities spokesperson said that housing minister Gordon Lyons spoke at the conference via a pre-recorded video and “acknowledges the challenges highlighted by Homeless Connect”.
The Northern Ireland Executive launched a consultation on its draft Programme for Government in September, which made housing one of its nine priorities following years of campaigning by housing bodies in the country.
At the time, Homeless Connect and the Chartered Institute of Housing said that prioritising housing with plans for delivering and retrofitting homes, as well as preventing homelessness, is “positive”.
But they said the success of the proposals will depend on the funding allocated to them.
The Northern Ireland Federation of Housing Associations called for a “lot more detail” on the plans.
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