Northern Ireland Housing Executive

The Housing Executive is Northern Ireland’s regional strategic housing authority.  It was formed in 1971 against a background of growing civil unrest to address both allegations of discrimination in housing and poor housing conditions.  Since then it has successfully combined an operational role – it still owns and manages approximately 90,000 dwellings – with its strategic research, planning and policy development role. 

Housing conditions have improved considerably in Northern Ireland since the early 1970s when one fifth of Northern Ireland’s housing stock was statutorily unfit.  Today less than 5 per cent is considered unfit.  Over the years the Housing Executive’s Research and Planning departments have played a key strategic role helping the Housing Executive not only to improve housing conditions, but to guide its intervention in the housing market in a considerable number of ways, most recently in relation to affordability, the private rented sector and the “shared future” housing, which will contribute to resolving outstanding political tensions in Northern Ireland.

For many years the Housing Executive’s Research Department has benefited from successful research partnerships with leading universities, notably with the Department of Urban Studies in the University of Glasgow and the School of the Built Environment at the University of Ulster.  An ongoing programme of research with these academic institutions is playing a significant role in helping the Housing Executive, in partnership with the Department for Social Development,  address the fall-out in Northern Ireland from the international housing and mortgage market crisis.