With the NI Assembly elections nearing, NI’s leading homelessness charity has unveiled three key items that it believes would make a real difference in tackling homelessness.
Believing that everyone deserves a home, the charity is all too aware of the lasting effects of homelessness, which can be devastating with many individuals experiencing deteriorations in mental and physical health. With this knowledge and ahead of the May elections, the charity is hoping that people will join them in asking future MLAs how they plan to end homelessness in Northern Ireland.
By speaking up about homelessness, the charity hopes this election will be the first step in stopping Northern Ireland from entering a homelessness disaster and believes there are three ways that the future Assembly can bring about meaningful change:
- The delivery of a Homelessness Co-operation Bill to put inter-departmental co-operation to ending homelessness on a legislative footing for the Departments for Communities, Education, Health and Justice and require them to report annually to the Assembly.
- The delivery of properly resourced, multiyear budgets for homelessness support services to facilitate long term funding decisions and to allocate needs assessed funding to flagship projects such as the Supporting People programme.
- Increased housing supply through a combination of public asset initiatives, refurbishing vacant properties, a fully supported NIHE build programme, and incentivising private rented sector use.
Click here to download the charity’s asks and use them to create opportunities for discussion on homelessness ahead of these important elections – a key issue that should be on the minds of all our politicians and future decisions makers.