Video: NIPSA launches housing policy document and says NIHE is the vehicle to take on the homelessness crisis in Derry

Sheena McDaid, a NIPSA representative in the city, said: “There’s about 2,500 people registered as homeless in this city. It’s a massive number and a lot for the local staff to deal with.”

Ms. McDaid was speaking at the launch of NIPSA’s new ‘21st Century Housing for NI’ report at the Guildhall.

The report, authored by Dr. Stewart Smyth, from the Centre on Household Assets and Savings Management at the University of Birmingham, supports NIPSA’s calls for the NIHE to be safeguarded as the lynchpin of public housing policy in the North.

“It’s vitally important to the community and the trade union movement that policy-makers are aware that there are alternatives to the demise of the NIHE. There are other streams of funding. There are other ways of doing it, and ultimately the most important thing is to let the NIHE borrow money in order to do new builds,” said Ms. McDaid.

Dr. Smyth said there had been a tendency in housing policy over the past 25 years to downgrade the publicly-owned and controlled NIHE in favour of promoting development by private associations.

A turning point was the decision in the mid-1990s to stop allocating grants to the NIHE to allow it build new houses.

“The money was put into housing associations instead. One of the things we’ve been calling for over the course of the three reports I’ve done for NIPSA is that there should be a level playing field.

“That the NIHE should be allowed access to public funding to start building homes again the way housing associations are. On top of that the NIHE has got the resources in terms of collateral and assets to be able to borrow. We need to make sure the NIHE is kept within the public sector but then can borrow the money to go and complete the maintenance and do the building programmes,” he said.

Dr. Smyth said suggestions housing mutuals or co-operatives could help solve the crisis here were wide of the mark.

Why adopt less accountable models tried in England when you had a unique model that had been proven to work in the North? It’s called the NIHE, said Dr. Smyth.

People Before Profit activist and social policy lecturer Goretti Horgan said: “I don’t understand why politicians and policy-makers don’t look at the size of the housing benefit. The last time that I saw it it was £573m in 2012, that we were paying to landlords, most of that to the private rented sector, very often to the people who borrowed from the banks that we also had to bail out.”

Independent Councillor Gary Donnelly said: “Since I was elected five or six years ago the vast majority of issues that I deal with are to do with people who are homeless or people who are looking for a home and with that comes all the mental health issues and all that comes with that. Terrible, terrible stuff.”

He continued: “You might get somebody a home but you are getting eight or nine new cases a week. I’ve had to erase people’s details because they have taken their own lives. These are people who were waiting for homes. I have no doubt in my mind that it was a contributing factor. It’s having a devastating impact.”

PBP Colr. Eamonn McCann said: “In historical terms it’s important to note that the housing problems, particularly in this city, to a large extent detonated the civil rights movement which resulted in the creation of the NIHE. The housing crisis and the political crisis led directly to the creation of the NIHE and it’s almost as if we’ve turned full circle.”

PBP Colr. Shaun Harkin said: “1,250 houses across the city and district are lying empty. There was a strategy to try and bring many of those houses back into use and that was a disaster and went nowhere. There are big promises but the reality is the NIHE is being destroyed.”

Sinn Féin Colr. Patricia Logue said: “I sit on the planning committee for Council and over the past number of years we have been working on our Local Development Plan, which is out for consultation at the minute but in it there are recommendations that where a private developer comes in to build, 10 per cent of the housing must be social and it must be mixed.”

Ms. McDaid said the housing crisis was putting increased pressure on NIHE staff. “They are finding there’s more social care needed now. People with addictions, alcohol and drugs, and people with mental health conditions but ultimately it’s a ‘Catch 22’, you need the housing.”