Cobain backs Ritchie on Woefully Inadequate Social Housing Draft Budget
Speaking today after a heated meeting of the Regional Development Committee at which Margaret Ritchie outlined the difficulties she faced in solving Social Housing problems with her limited budget, UUP Regional Development Spokesman and North Belfast MLA Fred Cobain said in a statement,
“I agreed with the Minister that the draft budget was woefully inadequate in a field which the Executive identified as a priority - housing.
This budget is the worst budget for housing I have seen in the last number of years. The number of people presenting themselves as homeless is going to increase because this budget does not address that. You have to conclude that is deliberate.
We need to tackle poverty at a number of roots. Social Housing provision must continue to grow. It is estimated that Northern Ireland needs between 2000-2500 new houses to meet the growing numbers of homeless people. The Department of Social Development is building just 600
The Housing Executive is not to wholly to blame given their tight financial constraints, the root cause, I believe, is decades of under-investment by successive governments.
One of life’s most basic rights is a decent place to live. Currently to a great many people this is a right that is denied to them. The draft Budget does not do enough to start tackling the problem. If the draft budget stays at is I can foresee the sight of a great many more homeless people on the streets of Northern Ireland and all the efficiency savings and other DUP and Sinn Fein buzzwords won’t be able to change that.
Priorities are in fact not priorities. An example: under the last Executive the OFMDFM budget was £32m – under Peter Robinson’s Draft Budget it has risen to £73.9m. That says all we need to know about priorities.“