Right to a roof trumps right to buy every time - Foyle MLA

The party’s Social Justice Spokesperson said fair and equitable approach to social housing in the North was needed, and said failing to curtail the right to buy scheme for Housing Executive properties at a time when there were 38,000 applicants waiting on a social home was detrimental to achieving this.

Mr Durkan’s comments follow his defeated amendment to the Housing Amendment Bill in the Assembly, which sought to extend the end of the mandatory Right to Buy Scheme for Housing Associations to include the NI Housing Executive.

The Foyle MLA commented: “The Right to Buy scheme has provided many families here with their only opportunity to get on the property ladder, however the perennial chronic social housing shortages and now the impact of Covid-19 on our housing crisis cannot be ignored.

“The right to own a property is trumped every time by the fundamental human right of having a roof over one’s head. It is for that reason I proposed that the decision to end the mandatory Right to Buy Scheme for Housing Associations must be extended to the NI Housing Executive.

“As the biggest social landlord here, we cannot turn a blind eye to the reality that the Housing Executive are haemorrhaging housing stock with a whopping 120,500 NIHE properties sold since 1979. Can we as a society really afford to reduce housing stock when we are failing to deal with the tip of the iceberg?

“Currently there are 38,000 households on the housing waiting lists, 20,000 in housing stress and 10,000 classified as homeless. Yet we are building fewer than 2,000 new social housing units every year. Individuals are sleeping on sofas, families are separated often staying in overcrowded homes, many of which are in poor or damp conditions, forced into properties and desperate situations wholly unsuitable to their needs. For their sake, it is not sustainable, smart or socially responsible to be selling off around 500 units every year from social housing stock.”

Mr Durkan said he was “baffled” by Sinn Féin opposing his amendment, “considering their previous policy was to scrap the Right to Buy completely”.

He also said that political paralysis has played a hand in deepening the North’s housing crisis. “The Right to Buy isn’t going to vanish overnight but it is critical that it is addressed. The current system is not fit for purpose,” he said.