Habinteg commits £48m to social housing for Derry & Strabane

Habinteg Housing Association currently has more than 320 homes under construction across nine sites with 42 units already completed and handed over this year.

The housing association confirmed the vast majority of these are in the north west, with a further £9m investment in the Belfast area in their current 2022/23 programme of development.

Completed in June, the 42 unit Duke Street site in the Waterside area of Derry has already been handed over to tenants.

Several more of the sites locally are set to be completed and handed over before the end of this year, the association said.

The remaining planned sites are due to be completed over the course of the next three years, with the first phase of the £26m Beechmount Village, Adria site in Strabane, due to hand over to tenants in early 2023.

Darren McKinney, Chief Executive of Habinteg, commented on the investment, saying: “Our current £57m development programme is well under way in a particularly busy development period, with 42 housing units already handed over this year and another 320 still under construction.

“We remain fully committed, during this intensive construction period, to building homes to the highest standards for our tenants. As we move to a Net Zero Carbon world, and an ongoing cost of living crisis, we are investing in delivering sustainable homes and focusing on energy efficiency to ensure our tenants are not heading into fuel poverty.

“In 2023, we look forward to welcoming our new tenants into the first phase of our 158 homes scheme at Beechmount Village, Strabane.”

In recent weeks, new figures revealed more people are waiting for a social house in Derry than in any other constituency in the north.

Housing Executive boss Grainia Long in October told Derry City and Strabane District Council there is ‘a major housing challenge in every council area’.

She said the gap between housing demand and supply continues to widen despite sustained investment in new social housing.

New figures from the Communities Minister Deirdre Hargey show that as of June 2022 there were 4,463 social housing applicants on the Housing Executive waiting list in the Foyle constituency.