Coulter warns of Home Buyers ‘Brain Drain’
Rev Dr Robert Coulter, the Ulster Unionist Party Assembly member for North Antrim and UUP Stormont Commissioner, has warned that thousands of people may leave Ulster if the Executive does not take radical steps to help potential home owners get on the property ladder.
Assemblyman Dr Coulter was reacting to the news the controversial Planning Policy Statement 14 (PPS14) limiting the building of new single dwellings in the countryside was to be axed.
He said the scrapping of PPS14 did not mean that first time buyers would find it easier to get onto the property ladder.
The North Antrim MLA hoped the end of PPS14 “would not automatically mean that housing developers would try and swamp rural areas of the constituency”.
He added it was “vitally important” the demise of PPS14 would be used constructively by the farming community to provide rural dwelling for agricultural families.
However, Dr Coulter warned: “Just as Northern Ireland has seen the so-called brain drain among young people being forced to leave the Province because of a lack of higher education places, so too, there is the very real danger our young people will have to abandon Ulster to find an affordable first rung on the property ladder.
“All evidence points to the fact that first-time buyers are being priced out of the market. There are very grave consequences if the Executive fails to address the situation.
“The Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors recently revealed housing in Northern Ireland increased by 36% in a 12-month period; the largest increase of any European region of Europe.”
But, said Dr Coulter, wages had not increased by that same percentage in Northern Ireland. “First time buyers receive hit after hit, whether that be the proposed home-value rates increases, or the proposed water taxes. The costs of living in Northern Ireland outweigh the income most young people could possibly aspire to generate.
“In the last 10 years, average house prices in Northern Ireland have tripled. Affordable housing is the key to countering poverty, and the inability to access decent, affordable housing impacts significantly on quality of life.
“There is undoubtedly a shortfall in the housing stock available for first-time buyers. While PPS14, threatened sustainable rural communities, its ending should not signal a glut in rural dwellings by developers.
“We need an affordable housing strategy, not the countryside being blighted with expensive and random developments.
“Young people are finding great difficulties remaining in areas in which their families and the generations before them lived.
“In the private rented sector, I would also support the registration of all landlords by the Housing Executive as well as statutory registration of houses in multiple occupation as this would curb those who abuse the system.
“The Executive must give serious consideration to implementing a similar policy to that of the Scottish Executive where in areas identified as having affordable housing needs, up to 25% of houses in new developments are for rent at low cost ownership,” said Assemblyman Dr Coulter.