Derelict properties become an Eye sore

Pair of derelict properties in the Beechmount area have become an eyesore for local residents the properties have been attracting vandals that have broke windows, graffiti sprayed over them and walls damaged at front & back of the houses.

The Beechmount residents collective has been speaking to a number of residents who have stressed their concern about the houses that are making beechmount street look like a ‘ghetto’ and are worried about who the houses will be rented to in the future.

Both properties at the bottom of Beechmount street are now boarded up, one boarded up for over a year and the other in the past had countless tenants over the years, and in recent times there was a problem tenant disturbing the wider community with weekend party’s, street fights and drugs.

Beechmount has become an area affected by the new buy-to-let boom, private landlords buying up houses that were once social housing and not caring about the wider community or the tenants they rent their houses too.

The Beechmount Residents collective contacted the Belfast city council regarding these properties.


A possible solution

if the landlord’s, house/houses have been lying empty and in disarray for a long period of time or unwilling to put the funds into restoring the house a possible solution would be for the City Council, working with housing associations, to buy vacant properties and take them back into social ownership.

Member of the Beechmount Residents Collective talks on the above issue to the             Andersonstown News (Thursday 25 of April 2013)...