• Official data for the past two quarters shows that over 45,000 applicants are on Northern Ireland’s social housing waiting list.
  • Annual figures for 2002-03 say that 26,248 people were waiting at that time.
  • Stats for the last two decades indicate a general trend of growing waiting lists.

On 7 October, an article in the Belfast Telegraph claimed:

“Two decades ago, 26,248 people were waiting for social housing. Now more than 45,000 are waiting.”

According to official statistics, this is accurate.

Moreover, these two points of data, 20 years, are not outliers. Nor do they create any misleading impression.

Both fit within a broad trend. Although waiting lists have not gone up every single year, in general they have been getting longer over the past two decades.

  • Latest figures

The latest social housing figures from the Department of Communities (DfC) and the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA) were published in August, and covered the second quarter of 2023 (April to June, inclusive).

According to those figures, a total of 45,292 applicants are on the social housing waiting list. Data for the previous quarter also showed over 45,000 applicants on the list.

What about 20 years ago?

  • Back in the day

The Northern Ireland Housing Statistics are an annual publication, also published by DfC and NISRA. The most recent report outlined, published last December, covered the year 2021-22.

That report is accompanied by official figures that cover the past two decades which show that, in 2002-03, there were 26,248 applicants on the waiting list.

This demonstrates thatthe claim is accurate, but it’s worth checking to see if there is anything unusual about these figures.

  • Pattern

In short, the figures from the claim do not appear to be outliers. Instead, it looks like they fit within an overall trend of rising demand over 20 years:

Figure 1 – source: Northern Ireland Housing Statistics 2021-22

Note that this table is based on figures published in the annual reports, to better account for any seasonal variations when comparing different years.

For this reason, data from the past two quarterly bulletins, which showed the number of applicants on the waiting list to be above 45,000, are excluded.