The number of new homes being built in Northern Ireland is at a 60-year low. At the same time, our growing population has never been bigger.
This lack of new homes has created a homelessness crisis. It is denying people the opportunity to own or rent a place of their own and the underlying problem of chronic underinvestment in our water infrastructure is degrading our environment and damaging our economy. BuildHomes NI is determined to fix this problem, but we need your help to encourage the Northern Ireland Executive to take meaningful action.
Who we are
Build Homes NI includes private and social housing organisations, united in the goal of providing direction to solve Northern Ireland’s housing crisis and unlock the housing market to deliver for everyone.
Build Homes NI represents some of the largest local developers who have collectively invested hundreds of millions of pounds in construction activity across NI in recent years (£500 million in 2019 / 2020 alone). We provide c.700 people locally with good, secure jobs and support hundreds of further jobs among subcontractors, professional services and the wider supply chain.
Our members have been involved in over 100 new housing developments across NI in recent years. We are experienced home providers, but our ambitions to build these desperately needed homes are being increasingly frustrated by problems associated with chronic underinvestment in NI’s wastewater infrastructure.
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The crisis has been caused by decades of political inaction, willful underfunding of our wastewater infrastructure and a lack of a can-do attitude from NI Water to work with house builders.
Our wastewater system isn’t fit for purpose and it’s becoming impossible across ever larger parts of Northern Ireland to make new connections to the system. No new connections mean no new homes. Thanks to wastewater capacity constraints 19,000 homes in NI cannot proceed. The effective moratorium on house building across many parts of Northern Ireland is causing house prices to rise faster than in many other parts of the UK.
In 2023, housing completions reached a 60-year low. That figure is likely to be even lower in 2024 at a time when our population continues to grow. The longer the current situation continues, house prices will be unnecessarily higher, more people will be forced into housing stress, there will be less investment in the economy and fewer jobs will be created.
This is unsustainable and should be unacceptable in any modern society.
A Social, Environmental and Economic Crisis
Wastewater infrastructure is crucial to every aspect of life. No new connections mean no new homes. It also means no new factories or the jobs they bring.
It makes it harder to redevelop schools or hospitals. It stops communities from growing and creates extra burdens for our already stretched public services. It is also destroying our environment with pollution from untreated sewage.
- Homelessness is at a record high
- 55,000 homeless people in NI – including 4,500 children
- Homelessness and people living in housing stress have poorer health, education and employment outcomes and are more susceptible to crime.
- NI annual house prices are growing at more than double the UK average
- NI Water is responsible for 1 in 8 pollution incidents in NI (NIAO)
- More than 20 million tonnes of untreated wastewater and sewage (incl. human waste and chemical discharges from factories) is being spilled into NI waterways annually
- There are 24,500 spills every year into rivers, lakes and bathing waters
- Only 31% of NI’s water bodies are in ‘good condition’. The 70% target for 2021 was deferred to 2027 and the Office for Environmental Protection believes that “is likely to be missed by a considerable margin”
- Failure to build new homes represents a direct £3.5bn cost to the local economy (based on the average value of 19,000 new homes).
- Every 2,000 homes that cannot be built represents an annual loss to the local economy of over £300m and 1,000 jobs
- Fewer homes mean less rates income for the NI Executive and local councils
Sign up to support our campaign and receive a template letter to write to your local representatives to encourage them to support the campaign to build more homes across Northern Ireland.
Contact us
If you would like further information about our campaign, please contact support@buildhomesni.com
