Minister's statement draws attention to deteriorating housing situation
01 January, 2021 00:59
The latest Housing Executive Annual Report illustrates the relentless dismantling by ‘new’ Stormont of the Housing Executive’s capacity to meet housing need that seems to have reached its logical conclusion in the recent announcement by Communities Minister Carál Ní Chuilín to break up the Housing Executive and to possibly privatise its housing stock into a separate body.
From 1971, when the Housing Executive was set up by ‘old’ Stormont in direct response to the Civil Rights Movement, until the mid-1990s, when they were ordered to stop building, the Housing Executive built at least 91,000 houses and made thousands of allocations, making it central to housing solutions. However, it is now sidelined and led by a board without any public profile or the inclination, in contrast to previous boards, to put the case to the public that the Housing Executive does not need so-called reform to build houses but a commitment from Stormont to fund it to do the job it was set up to do.