9 minute read
Mark O’Donnell, Deputy Secretary at the Department for Communities, discusses housing priorities
Housing priorities
Mark O’Donnell, Deputy Secretary of Housing, Urban Regeneration and Local Government at the Department for Communities (DfC) discusses housing priorities and the progress made in implementing the transformative housing programme.
“The first priority was the Housing Supply Strategy, aimed at giving everybody access to a good quality, affordable and sustainable home suitable to their needs and located within a thriving, inclusive community,” O’Donnell begins. Amid rising levels of housing stress and homelessness, affordability issues for those buying and renting, and the current cost of living crisis, O’Donnell reasons that the strategy sets out a policy framework within which difference-making programmes can be developed.
“This is what we call the whole-system approach and I am pleased that that approach has been broadly welcomed by all of our stakeholders and partners,” he says. “The whole-system approach emphasises that there is no single challenge to housing supply here; it is a range of challenges and the combination of those that means that we are not able to provide the right volume and type of homes in the right places.”
The Deputy Secretary explains that the vision for housing is underpinned by objectives to increase housing supply across all tenures, prevent homelessness, reduce housing stress, and prioritise housing solutions for those most in need, improve the quality of housing, build thriving and inclusive communities, and support a just transition to carbon neutrality.
“Clearly, we need more social houses,” O’Donnell says. “The most significant capital investment our Department makes to address housing need is through the Social Housing Development Programme it operates with the Housing Executive and housing associations to develop new social homes.”
2,403 housing units were started in the financial year 2020/21, the highest figure achieved in 10 years. “In 21/22 we spent £171 million on new-build social housing, which is the highest spend that we have ever achieved in a single year and a total of 1,713 starts were achieved by the end of March 2022,” O’Donnell adds.
“This year, more than any year previously, we have demonstrated that it is really difficult to work within an annual budget. It gives you an artificial cut off point. It adds weight to the challenges that the absence of a functioning Executive and a multi-year budget pose.”
A significant challenge facing housing in Northern Ireland is the revitalisation of the Housing Executive, as laid out by former Minister for Communities Carál Ní Chuilín MLA. O’Donnell says that work to date has established the “clear and pressing need for intervention” to prevent the loss of social homes and to enable the significant and growing investment requirement to be met.
will include its allocation of social housing. The Fundamental Review of the Allocation of Social Housing, which was published in 2020, is now at implementation stage, with 18 of the 20 proposals progressed over the next three years subject to funding.
“Social housing is not the only housing we need,” O’Donnell adds. “If we are to meet our housing needs, we have to deliver affordable homes. The Department continues to provide significant funding for co-ownership as our main partner for the delivery of immediate homes here. That has enabled over 30,000 people to buy their homes, many for the first time. We have £158 million of financial transactions capital loan funding approved to deliver over 4,000 affordable homes through co-ownership over a four-year programme. The Department has also increased co-ownership’s property value limited from £165,000 to £175,000 and we hope that will ensure that people can continue to access affordable homes right across Northern Ireland and we will keep co-ownership’s property value limit under review to ensure it remains set at an appropriate level.”
The private rented sector has by now become the biggest part of Northern Ireland’s housing market, and the introduction of the Private Tenancies Act has sought to regulate the sphere, bringing safety requirements, minimum energy efficiency requirements and strengthened security of tenure to renters. This is just the beginning, O’Donnell says: “The next phase of that private sector reform will include regulation of letting agents, the introduction of Grounds for Eviction, consideration of how we can ensure rents area fair and a review of fitness standards across all tenures.”
As homelessness rises, O’Donnell points to the £72.8 million of protected funding in the Supporting People Programme every year since 2015/16 from his department as evidence of work being done, but also reinforces the need for long-term planning to be supported with a multi-year budget.
Concluding, he turns to the climate agenda facing all sectors, but not least housing which faces a radical decarbonisation over the next decade: “The question is: how do we fulfil our housing targets at the same time as fulfilling our obligations to meet net zero targets? How do we support households to decrease transmissions in houses they already have and how do we ensure a just transition for those most vulnerable? Those are the main questions facing us as we find ourselves on the pathway to zero carbon by 2050. We don’t have all the answers to that, but we do address it in our housing supply strategy, and the green growth energy strategies. All of those provide us with the framework for the changes that we need to make.”
Time to talk about stigma
At Clanmil, our purpose is to provide homes for people to live well and over the past year we have been re-examining how best we can work with our customers to do just that, writes Carol McTaggart, Clanmil Housing Group Chief Executive.
We all know the importance of a good home. We know it is so much more than shelter. It is a place where we can belong, put down roots and be part of something bigger. It allows us to make the most of opportunities to flourish and grow. Essentially, it helps form who we are.
That is why it is so concerning when the tenure of our home, whether we own it or rent it, is used to define us and becomes a label by which others judge us and measure our worth in society.
Most of us will agree that it just should not happen that someone is judged because they rent their home from a social landlord. Yet this is our reality.
Too many people carry an often unconscious bias about social housing and the people who live in it. A survey of over 500 adults in Northern Ireland, carried out by the Chartered Institute of Housing in partnership with Professor Roger Awan-Scully of Cardiff University towards the end of 2020, revealed that stigma around social housing remains a persistent theme in Northern Ireland. 44 per cent of the people asked said they would never want to live in social housing, and 56 per cent thought that social housing has high levels of antisocial behaviour and crime. Some did recognise the need for affordable housing, but many did not want it close to them.
With one in six households across Northern Ireland living in a social home, this sweeping stigmatisation simply cannot go unchallenged.
I grew up in social housing. Back then, you could easily identify social housing estates and there were times when I was made to feel there was something inferior about my home and my community because we lived in social housing. Whilst the house was a haven for me and my family during a turbulent time in Northern Ireland, its design and layout did not lend itself to our daily family life. Things like eating together as a family or finding quiet space for homework were impossible. Today we are working to provide quality, well designed homes that are tenure blind.
In England, a campaign run by people who live in social housing, called See the Person, looked closely at where the stigma comes from. They found the causes to be many and varied, including the way the media represents and reports on social housing and the
Carol McTaggart, Clanmil Housing Group Chief Executive (second from right) with some members of Clanmil’s Central Customer Council.
people who live in it, and the fact that housing policy often promotes home ownership as superior to renting. More surprisingly, they also pointed to the role of social housing providers and the people who work for them in creating and reinforcing stigma. They called for landlords to work with tenants to tackle inappropriate views and language and to develop relationships of mutual respect.
At Clanmil we have been focusing on the relationships we have with the people who live in the homes we provide, and we have been making changes.
One thing we are doing is trying to avoid labels that could suggest that people who rent their homes are somehow different. We are challenging ourselves to see the person and to work hard to build the trust and great relationships that are essential if we are to fulfil our purpose.
The people who live in our homes are our customers. They expect, and deserve, a standard of customer service from us that is as good as they receive from other businesses. While we do not always get it right, we want to meet this expectation and make sure that the customer experience with us is the best it can be.
We are working hard with our customers to rebalance our relationships with them by moving towards a customer space where people have a say in the services we provide and how we deliver them.
We are building a diverse pool of customers who are helping to shape our services and we are encouraging them to raise their voices on behalf of the more than 10,500 people who live in our homes, placing them front and centre of our decision making.
This has not been without its challenges. Building mutually respectful relationships takes time, focus and most of all, a willingness from all to be open and receptive. It is an ongoing conversation that is transforming our understanding of our customers and helping us be more responsive.
I believe passionately in the importance of social housing. It plays such an important role in the quality of life for so many people. It is part of the solution, not the problem.
The stigma that too often surrounds it can affect people’s life chances and we must do something about that. It is time to have an open and honest conversation about the stigma associated with social housing.
This conversation needs to involve government, the media, housing providers, politicians, and of course, the people who live in social homes. We all need to ask ourselves how we are contributing to this stigma and how we can break down and challenge the bias surrounding social housing. We can all be part of the change that’s needed.
For our part at Clanmil, we will continue to work with our customers to create places where people want to live, where they are proud to live, and where they have the same opportunities as anyone else.
Contact Clanmil Housing Group T: 028 9087 6000 E: housing@clanmil.org.uk W: www.clanmil.org.uk
