The number of people waiting for social housing in Northern Ireland has risen to over 50,000 for the first time, according to new quarterly statistics published today by the Department for Communities.
In the first quarter of 2026 the social housing waiting list stood at 50,381, up 1,298 on the same quarter last year. This continues the trend of a lengthening waiting list with almost 6,000 more people on the list since the first quarter of 2022.
Ciarán Fox, Director of the Royal Society of Ulster Architects (RSUA), commented, “Northern Ireland’s social housing waiting list passing 50,000 is a clear sign that government action continues to fall short of delivering enough homes to meet demand.”
“The Northern Ireland Executive agreed the Housing Supply Strategy in December 2024 with a commitment to produce an Action Plan by March 2025 at the latest. Today we should be reviewing the success or failure of that Action Plan. However, 18 months after the Strategy was agreed, we still have no Action Plan. We keep on hearing that housing is an Executive priority, but this is not how a functioning Government treats its priority issues.”
“The Minister for Communities has instigated some important reviews that hopefully will result in the removal of some barriers to the delivery of social housing. However, this is a challenge that must be addressed in a co-ordinated way across Government.”
“There is great potential to provide additional homes and address dereliction through the re-use of existing buildings. However, government policy must incentivise this. NI Water is making it very difficult for empty buildings to be brought back in to use.”
“We don’t underestimate the enormous challenges to increasing the supply of good quality new homes. Indeed we are strongly advocating for Local Councils and NI Government to work together to appoint City and Council Architects to help tackle this challenge and many others that face our built environment. The City Architect model has been shown to work in many places across Europe.”
