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Belfast City Council is to consider fast tracking planning applications for social housing in a bid to tackle the effect of homelessness on kids.

At least 20,000 children across Northern Ireland are spending their childhoods in hostels and emergency or temporary accommodation.

Councillors voted to officially recognise the Belfast’s housing crisis and the impact it is having at Thursday’s council meeting.

The move follows a Belfast Live article highlighting the experiences of children languishing on Housing Executive waiting lists as part of the Build Homes Now campaign supported by Participation and the Practice of Rights (PPR).

Belfast councillor SDLP Brian Heading said: “The motion will be progressed through the planning committee.

(Image: PPR)

“We will be arguing that the planning committee will need to address the issue.”

He said this would be in the form of discussions about fast tracking planning applications for social homes or land that could be zoned for housing.

He said council will also be taking its concerns to the Department for Communities and Northern Ireland Housing Executive.

He added: “Some of the points that we will be making are that we are not just talking about housing units here, we are talking about building homes.

“Council recognises there is a crisis, but this is the first time that it’s going before the planning committee.

“Hopefully they will adopt the ideas.”

Recent figures from the Housing Executive show there are almost 20,950 children in families waiting for social housing.

At least 13,636 are in housing stress and PPR say Northern Ireland’s Housing Executive is failing in its duty to house at least 11,372 of those children.

(Image: PPR)

Belfast City Council’s motion also recognised that the United Nations has intervened three times in the last 10 years to urge Westminster and the devolved Stormont Executive “to intensify their efforts to address and overcome persistent religious inequalities in social housing”.

Council, through its motion, is now calling on Department for Communities and Northern Ireland Housing Executive to work with it and “use all available powers, including powers of vesting, zoning and planning, to ensure that housing provision meets current and projected needs”.

The Housing Executive has already said it will work to “secure planning policies to help priorities land for social and affordable housing”.

While Department for Communities added: “Where housing need has been established in an area and it cannot be addressed because there are no suitable sites available, NIHE may ask the department to use its vesting powers to acquire land for social housing.”

PPR’s Elfie Seymour said: “#BuildHomesNow are happy that the council have passed this motion on behalf of the families involved in making the film ‘Waiting on a Childhood’ as for the first time they are formally recognising the state of crisis we are in and the persistent religious inequality, commercial speculation, and misuse of land that has led us here.

“We know that the vesting powers government has are critical because for new social housing we need land. We can only hope that following this motion they are more responsive to the needs of homeless families in this city.”

News that five derelict North Belfast homes are to be “brought back to life” has been welcomed.

The SDLP has been campaigning for the Housing Executive to regenerate the homes in a high area of need for some time.

A Housing Executive spokesperson yesterday confirmed that work on the homes will start in January.

Belfast SDLP councillor Paul McCusker said: “This a positive day for the residents of North Belfast, particularly those who have been on the social housing waiting list for some time.

“These works will ensure that a number of families will be guaranteed a home in 2019, and although we have a mountain to climb in terms of tackling the housing crisis here, this is certainly a step in the right direction.

(Image: SDLP)

“Eia Street is in the Waterworks ward which has been found to be the most impoverished ward in Northern Ireland. It is my hope that decisions like today’s, as well as greater investment in the area, can turn this statistics around.”

A Housing Executive spokesperson said: “We can confirm five properties in this area are part of an improvement scheme which is currently scheduled to begin in January.

“A contractor is in the process of being procured to undertake the work.”

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