Housing and Homelessness Policy Statement

Having a decent home is fundamental to personal wellbeing and social inclusion. It provides security, promotes health and gives a firm platform for creating social networks, capitalising on educational opportunities and securing employment.

Everyone should have access to appropriate, high quality housing in the tenure of their choice, especially those in greatest need. The issue of homelessness needs to be recognised across government departments, for example education of young people about homelessness, setting up a home and good citizenship.

The voluntary and community sector can offer insights based on its direct experience of discharging two distinct roles in relation to housing and homelessness:

• acting as an advocate on housing issues;
• acting as a provider of social housing and housing support.

Political parties and the Assembly should:

• Encourage the development of an overarching, comprehensive strategy for housing in Northern Ireland which encompasses all types of tenure.
• Ensure that housing, housing support services and homelessness are seen as priority areas within the Assembly’s Budget, the Comprehensive Spending Review and Financing Our Future.
• Evaluate the effectiveness of the Supporting People funding and mechanism, with a view to increasing the funding available.
• Ensure that current and accurate information is available on actual social housing need.
• Support the development of housing which is more sustainable in terms of:
  -social integration;
  -responsible use of natural resources;
  -designed to ‘Lifetime Home’ standards so that it is much more suitable for everybody, including those with permanent or temporary mobility problems.
• Ensure that a range of options for access to housing is available through social housing (including equity sharing), the private rented sector (for example rent guarantee schemes) and the owner-occupied sector to prevent homelessness.
• Support research and services designed to meet the needs of homeless people and to break the cycle of homelessness by creating linkages between employment services, health services, social services and so on (Foyer schemes provide a good example of this) and signposting between housing providers.
• Where appropriate, make well-integrated provision for those needing special design and/or housing services by virtue of their vulnerability or important cultural differences.
• Support changes in the private rented sector, including registering private landlords to ‘kite mark’ quality provision, a points system to measure levels of fitness, and a regulatory body which can advise on tenants’ rights.
• Introduce a more sophisticated method of determining which homes are ‘unfit for human habitation’.
• More fundamentally review the ‘House Sales Scheme’ (commonly known as the Right to Buy scheme) to ensure an adequate support of social housing lettings over the long term.