Northern Ireland Housing Executive

It has statutory responsibility for homelessness and also administers the housing benefit system and Supporting People programme in Northern Ireland.

Only ratepayers and their spouses could vote in council elections - sub-tenants, lodgers, and adults living with their parents could not - so allocation of housing was "distorted for political ends".

[4] This largely took the form of discrimination against Catholics to ensure Unionist control of councils,[5] opposition to which was a major plank of the Northern Ireland civil rights movement of the late 1960s.

[4] Following civil disturbances in 1968–69, a commission appointed by the Northern Ireland government and led by Lord Cameron found that "grievances concerning housing were the first general cause of the disorders which it investigated".

[8] A single all-purpose housing authority for Northern Ireland had been advocated as early as 1964 by the Northern Ireland Labour Party[9] but it was not until the British Home Secretary, James Callaghan, visited the Stormont Government in the wake of the Belfast Riots of August 1969 and pressed for a unified housing body that the Stormont regime took the idea seriously.

Derelict houses were sold on the open market, for prices as low as £100, accompanied by loans and grants to help buyers renovate them.

[12] A report published in June 2010 by Queens University Belfast stated that social housing in Northern Ireland was not adequately funded.