Social housing completions halve in Northern Ireland

The SHDP is managed by the housing executive’s development programme group (DPG), which provides grant funding to housing associations to build or buy new social homes.

The housing bulletin also revealed that there were 28 starts through the SHDP in the latest quarter, down from 32 in the same period last year.

Housing bodies warned in June of “grave concerns” over the Department for Communities (DfC) only being able to fund up to 400 new social home starts in 2024-25, a fall of 73%.

The DfC’s capital funding was cut by 38% in Northern Ireland’s budget in May.

The latest housing figures also showed there were 47,936 applicants on the NIHE waiting list as of 30 June.

Of these applicants, 36,137 households were described as being in “housing stress” and 30,069 had full duty applicant (FDA) status.

A full duty applicant is a person to whom the government owes a duty under homelessness legislation.

In total, 4,197 people presented as homeless to the NIHE in the three months, a slight rise on the 4,176 in the same quarter last year.

Around a third of those who presented as homeless were single males, which was the highest proportion. Families represented 29% of the total, the figures showed.