Housing Associations can help ease housing crisis

With over 36,000 on the housing waiting list the Northern Ireland Federation of Housing Associations (NIFHA) fully supports the call by Margaret Ritchie for additional funding to build more houses and asks the Minister to urgently examine the constraints to housing associations in developing new social housing.

Barriers to housing development

Housing associations have provided virtually all new social housing since 1998 and experience a wide range of barriers to their development work. These include:

• buying land at prices low enough to permit the development of schemes satisfying the government's value for money criteria
• securing planning consent within a reasonable time-frame;
• providing housing management services which satisfy rising tenant expectations while still meeting the demanding efficiency targets set by the government; and
• meeting the myriad of requirements as laid down by the Department for Social Development (DSD).

In addition to these, housing associations are facing new challenges:

• the government's proposed strategy for procuring social housing which implies associations should form alliances or merge;
• the proposal that private developers should be eligible to receive Housing Association Grant (HAG) but no unambiguous mention that "the playing field must be level"
• a possible unified rent setting structure across the social rented sector.

Chris Williamson, NIFHA’s Chief Executive, commented: