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Residents due to present evidence to Dolores Kelly MLA, Social Development Committee Representative

Social housing residents from North Belfast are meeting today (Wednesday 15th January 2013)  with the SDLP’s Social Housing spokesperson and representative on the NI Assembly Social Development Committee Dolores Kelly MLA to present over a year’s worth of research into the poor housing conditions and experiences of families on the waiting list in North Belfast.

The Equality Can’t Wait group of North Belfast residents are campaigning for a time-bound, resourced strategy to tackle the housing inequality impacting the Catholic community in North Belfast. Despite being an acknowledged inequality for over a decade, the current Minister for Social Development Minister, Nelson McCausland MLA has publicly denied any such housing inequality on the grounds of religion exists.

Arlene Hickey, a North Belfast mother who has been campaigning with other residents for the past year and whose story is documented in the research said:

“Hopefully this report will force the Minister to sit up and listen; it’s long past time for action to be taken to address the housing crisis here. I am pregnant with my third child and I have been on the housing waiting list for well over a year. I was allocated a property in the summer of 2013 after 8 months waiting. It had no heating system at all and the place was still being tested for asbestos. The way people like me are being treated is appalling.”

The research entitled ‘The Human Impact – Residents Tell Their Stories’ documents the results of surveys carried out by residents  in the New Lodge, the Seven Towers High rise complex and Harbourview Apartments in Pilot Street with over 250 residents in the wider New Lodge area involved. Evidence has been collected from both Housing Executive and Housing Association properties. Resident research shows the widespread problems people face when they are forced to spend long periods on the waiting list in unsuitable housing plagued by damp and with little or no heat. The research documents resident problems with social housing providers’ response when they report a problem as well as evidence the impact the unsuitability of being forced to live in homes which impact on people’s health and don’t meet the needs of their families. The Human Impact brings to life the residents research by documenting the real life impact on residents who share their personal stories.

Key findings of the research include:

  • 38% of residents are living in homes with damp
  • 89% of residents are unhappy with the heating system in their homes
  • 88% of residents are unhappy with the response when they report problems
  • 71% of residents reported that their housing is having a negative impact on their health
  • 73% of residents report that their current housing does not meet the needs of their family

The Human Impact is however, more than research – it is a blueprint for the Equality Can’t Wait residents monitoring over the next twelve months and a set of targets for government to meet in order to realise their international human rights obligations.

Publication of the residents’ research comes just five months after the release of the Equality Can’t Wait report which revealed over a decade’s worth of Ministerial, statutory and council failures which have compounded religious inequality in North Belfast. Equality Can’t Wait pointed to Housing Executive figures which showed the inequality experienced by Catholics in need of social housing in Belfast who wait on average 23 months whilst the average wait for Protestants is 12. In North Belfast specifically, it was further recognised in 2008 by the DSD that based on NIHE figures, by 2012 95% of the projected need for new homes in North Belfast would be in the Catholic community.

The residents’ campaign is backed by the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, who called for social housing inequality impacting Catholics in North Belfast to be tackled in 2009 and the residents recently met with the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Housing during her visit to Belfast as well as the Northern Ireland Commissioner for Children and Young People. Both have highlighted the poor housing conditions and called for action from the government.

Residents were due to meet with a Ministerial representative from the Department for Social Development, along with the Housing Executive and Clanmill Housing Association to discuss the research findings until Department officials pulled out of the meeting citing the residents issues as ‘operational’. The move came following a letter sent by the Minister to the residents which stated that his Department did “not accept” the existence of religious inequality in North Belfast.

Seán Brady, Local Development Worker with PPR, works to support the residents’ campaign, he commented:

“The evidence being presented today is the real hard edge of the Executive’s failure to prioritise tackling the housing crisis in North Belfast. This is not simply an issue of ‘local’ significance. The issue has been highlighted by the UN, the Council of Europe Human Rights Commissioner, the Children’s Commissioner and others. The Minister must realise that denying the problem will not make it go away. The residents continue to live in unacceptable housing conditions and the Minister has an obligation to tackle them. PPR call on him to recommit his Department to tackling the issue by working with residents to develop a time-bound, resourced strategy to tackle religious inequality. We call on all of the parties on the Executive to make this a priority issue.”

Dolores Kelly MLA, who has met with the Group and raised the issue in the Assembly said:

“The conditions that the people of north Belfast have been subjected to are intolerable and would not be accepted in any other functioning democracy.

Any objective analysis or examination of the facts can come to only one conclusion - Catholics in need of housing are being discriminated against.

The return by DSD Minister Nelson McCausland of up to £50m in recent monitoring rounds is nothing short of 21st century gerrymandering.

In the wake of former DUP leader Ian Paisley’s admission that the denial of housing for Catholics which sparked the Civil Rights Movement was wrong, the Social Development Minister’s energies would be better spent robustly challenging the inequalities which continue to plague housing allocation in the North rather than handing back money earmarked for housing hand over fist.”

To download a copy of ‘The Human Impact’ please click here.

To listen to residents' testimony launched alongside 'The Human Impact' please click here.