The Housing Crisis and its Impact on Women and Families

While the housing crisis impacts everyone in our society, I’ll focus on the impact the housing crisis has on the women and families we work with daily at the Focus Project in Derry. The housing crisis isn’t new. It is rooted in historical inequality, going back to the Civil Rights Movement. For generations, families, especially in working-class communities, have struggled for something very basic: a safe, secure home.

Women, and especially single mothers, feel the sharpest edge of this crisis. I see it every day in my work with the Focus Project, and I have lived it personally. There is nothing more demoralising than feeling you can’t provide stability for your children. Housing insecurity takes over your life – your mental health suffers, your child’s development suffers, and your sense of hope for the future begins to disappear. It’s a feeling too many women in this city know. And it’s unacceptable.

The community and voluntary sector can’t continue plugging the gap in supports in housing, education and health, especially while so many workers in the sector are impacted by the very issues they work to address. With funding cuts and insecure temporary contracts, workers are over stretched, underpaid and at crisis point themselves.

 What’s driving this crisis?

Let’s be clear, this is a structural failure. It is not the fault of any other community, and we must counteract misinformation being spread by the far-right.

• There’s a chronic shortage of social housing. Only a fraction of what’s needed is being built.
• The private rental market is broken. Rents have skyrocketed – £800, £900 a month –while wages have stayed low. NI salaries are below the UK average, in Derry they are even lower.
• Derelict and vacant properties sit unused, while families are put into B&Bs or hotels
• Derry, in particular, suffers from the legacy of historical underinvestment
• “Hidden homelessness” – people staying with relatives, couch-surfing, stuck in overcrowded or unsafe conditions are not even not counted in official figures.

The impact on women and families is devastating.

Women are trapped in abusive relationships because leaving would mean homelessness or uprooting their families and losing vital support systems. Women are literally risking their lives. Refuges and supportive accommodation, once a temporary measure, is now full to capacity as there is nowhere for women to move on to.

Families are juggling in low-paid work, with unacceptable childcare costs, rising bills, and unaffordable rent – often spending 25% of their income just to keep a roof over their heads, for single people this can be up to 50% on an average full-time salary. Work doesn’t pay. It is not enough to work in order to survive, work should pay enough to help us all thrive.

Children are moving from place to place. Their education is severely disrupted. Often services they have engaged with are lost. Children lose friendships. And their overall sense of safety can be shattered.

For people who manage to secure housing, we have inadequate housing stock. The daily reality for far too many families is that they are living with black mould, in cold houses, and with infestations. Often tenants are afraid to raise issues, especially in temporary housing, for fear of eviction

All of this is taking a toll on people’s mental health. Pregnant women and new mothers are highly vulnerable to stress, anxiety and depression linked to housing insecurity. We know that impacts not only themselves, but their babies too, especially during their formative years.

In the community development sector, we are educating and empowering women to be resilient, to be trauma-informed, to raise their children with care and stability. But how can they do that in homes that are unfit to live in? This system is setting them, and their children, up for long-term harm. Families often end up with social services involvement due to the knock-on effect of housing instability. I believe we have a ticking time bomb of the impact of this crisis on children.

 So, what’s being done and where are the gaps?

The Housing Supply Strategy aims to build 100,000 new homes by 2037 – but progress is painfully slow, and the strategy is underfunded. Only a third of those homes will be social housing. What about the rest? What counts as affordable, affordable for whom? Affordable housing schemes like co-ownership or rent-to-own are helpful for some – but they’re not accessible for low-income families on benefits or insecure work, the days of securing permanent long-term work is over for many working adults.

The Social Housing Development Programme is meant to increase housing, but funding is limited. Housing Associations who can build housing have higher rents than NIHE, pushing working families into further hardship once they secure permanent housing.

The Homelessness Strategy aims to prevent homelessness but there simply isn’t enough emergency accommodation.

The long-awaited City Deal for Derry holds promise for economic development, but housing needs to be at the heart of that, otherwise the benefits will bypass those who need it most.

We still do not have an Anti-Poverty Strategy, years after it was promised. That is unacceptable in a region with some of the highest child poverty rates in the UK and it would underpin so many of the socio-economic issues we deal with in our communities.

 What’s needed?

 We cannot keep kicking this can down the road. We need to:

• Invest in women and family-focused housing by expanding funding for refuges and supported housing schemes.
• Scrap the outdated “2-bedroom rule” that keeps families in overcrowded homes or leads to constant movement into new housing estates, disrupting the settlement of new communities, and disrupting families trying to set down roots.
•  Control the private rental market: Introduce rent caps, enforce stronger protections against evictions.
•  Improve housing standards across the board by bringing empty buildings back into use for permanent homes.
• Implement a “use it or lose it” policy for the owners of long vacant and derelict properties.
• Let NI Housing Executive borrow and build again and streamline planning to speed up social housing delivery.
• Reinvest in public housing as a long-term solution.
• Fund wraparound support for women and children. Improving access to mental health care tailored to housing-insecure women as a way of mitigating the outcomes of trauma in the future.
•  Increase legal aid and advocacy support for people facing eviction.

Housing is a human right, not a privilege and certainly not a political bargaining tool.

Right now, women and families in Northern Ireland are being denied that right. The consequences are already visible – and they will only grow if we continue to do nothing. We need urgent, compassionate, and strategic action. We need long-term thinking that doesn’t just manage crisis after crisis but builds a future where everyone has a safe and stable home. Let’s not accept this as normal. Let’s ensure everyone can access something as basic as shelter, dignity, and a place to call home.

Amie Gallagher is an organiser with the Derry Housing Action Committee for the up-coming march and rally for Housing in Derry, Saturday 14 June, 1pm assembling at the Waterside train station, march to the Guildhall.

Amie Gallagher is an activist and the coordinator of the Focus Project in Creggan. She has been a vocal advocate for working class women in Derry for a long time. She sits on the NIAPN Board.