I am sure pretty much everyone in the UK knows that Northern Ireland is cold and wet. It really is. Some summers are fantastic, but the best you can hope for is a few decent months to break up the wet and cold weather.

Last winter the city centre, and major motorways, were closed for days as a result of huge amounts of snow.

It really is cold.

So then, I find (on good old BBC News) an interesting piece which seems to be a Christian “charity” planning to slowly kill off people in Belfast who need access to social housing:

Dozens of new homes will be so energy efficient that they are to be built without central heating systems, those behind a new venture have announced.

More than 50 social housing properties will be constructed over the next three years in the scheme which is led by by Habitat for Humanity Northern Ireland. (from BBC Northern Ireland)

Wow. Can you imagine sitting there, without central heating, while enough snow falls to close down the busiest motorway in the country? I can understand making them so heating efficient that central heating could be sparsely used – however not providing the facility strikes me as a cruel and unusual punishment for two main reasons:

1 – Should unpredictably bad weather arrive, or the house has been unoccupied for two weeks in a cold spell etc., there is no easy, cost-efficient way to reheat the home to a habitable temperature. Do they expect the needy to shiver for a week, or burn furniture?

2 – The house has no resale value. No one would willingly buy a house like this other than those in desperate need. ‘Nuff said.

Its not that simple though, not only are those in need of social housing expected to freeze to death in the winter, they still have to pay 80% of the price of a normal house in the area:

Construction is set to begin shortly at Madrid Street and the first completed houses will cost in the region of £100,000.

That is not enough for the cruel, greedy, Christians though:

People who want to live in the properties will have to get their hands dirty though. Habitat for Humanity is a Christian organisation which helps families to build their own homes, with the help of volunteers. The entire project will require 84,000 hours of volunteer time.

So they have to pay to build their own house. Wow. How “charitable.” It gets weirder though. Just in case these selfish needy people manage to survive the winter in their social housing, there is one last sting in the tail:

The properties will be made air-tight and will be fitted with triple-glazed windows.

Is this legal? While I cant be bothered calculating the volume of air they will have, surely life wont last long…

Aren’t Christian Charities Wonderful…………