B Groups are:

1. Degree of sharing

2. Degree of overcrowding

3. Lack of amenities and disrepair

4. Length of time on Housing List

5. Elderly points

6. Ex-service points

7. Local preference

8. Hostel dwellers

9. Under-occupation

10. Family support.

Minimum and maximum points which may be awarded in respect of these categories are explained in the Housing Executive Booklet (May 1989).

1.5 Northern Ireland Federation of Housing Association
This was established by the Housing Order (NI) 1976 and incorporated on 26 April 1977 as a company limited by guarantee. Registration, control and financing of Housing Associations is vested in the Department of the Environment Northern Ireland. Its aim is the provision of sheltered and specialist accommodation for older people and implementation of community renewal in Belfast. Tenant selection policies and rent levels are similar to those operated by the Housing Executive and a similar points system is used.

The role of the Council is to represent the Housing Association movement to all concerned including Government and Statutory Bodies, and to deal with broad policy issues.

The Council consists of 10 and not more than 16 members. The DOE (NI) and the Housing Executive each have a non-voting representative on the Council. Members may be co-opted to ensure that the Council is as fully representative as possible. It has specialist subcommittees (new building, rehabilitation, special needs) which may do likewise.


2. Historical Developments

2.1 Milestones in Housing

2.2 Brief Historical Summary
The plantation of Ulster in the early part of the seventeenth century influenced the distribution of land and power in Northern Ireland in ways which are still evident today. The flight of the earls in 1607 left Ulster without leadership and afforded the English Government the opportunity to solve its problems in what it considered to be one of Ireland's most troublesome areas.

The ideal solution had been known for generations. It was, in a word, plantation... Land was the source of wealth and the basis of power. To take it from the Catholic Irish and give it to the Protestant immigrants would at once weaken resistance to English rule and bring into being a Protestant community sufficiently numerous, and sufficiently powerful, to keep the peace in Ireland. If the Irish would not become Protestant, then Protestants must be brought to Ireland. (Clarke 1967)

In many ways the Antrim Coast was closer to the Scottish mainland than to its own hinterland.

In theory, the six counties of Armagh, Coleraine, Fermanagh, Tyrone, Cavan and Donegal were to be worked on, producing an ideal pattern of close settlement that would feature urbanisation and segregation. No Irish tenants were to be allowed on the lands taken over by the major "undertakers". (Foster)

The changes which these numerous and socially diversified Protestant newcomers wrought in Ulster were dramatic and far-reaching. A whole new society was created, one which was not only alien to the native traditions of the area, but also different in character from every other part of Ireland. (Clarke 1967)

The second plantation, or Cromwellian settlement, in Ulster was less carefully organised. It provided rather for a transfer of power from Catholics to Protestants and it created a Protestant upper class who owned the land rather than living and working on it.

Foster explains that

what must be grasped from the early seventeenth century is the importance of the plantation idea, with its emphases on segregation and on native unreliability. These attitudes helped Ulster solidify into a different mould. The reliance of the planters upon the Irish, economically, was combined with an obsession about their religious, and therefore political untrustworthiness.

In 1885 the Royal Commission on the Housing of the Working Classes found housing conditions in Belfast and Londonderry to be among the best in the United Kingdom. Towards the end of the nineteenth century the period of high economic development was coming to an end and there followed a period "of apathy and stagnation in housing matters which was to last for half a century" (Brett).

The position in the countryside and small towns had not mirrored the growth in housing and standards in the cities. From 1883, grants could be obtained from Government by the rural district councils to build cottages for labourers. Only 634 dwellings including one lodging house were built between 1890 and 1919. (Birrell and Murie 1980) Between 1919 and 1936, 4,300 labourers' cottages were constructed in the six counties outside Belfast. None were built in Co. Fermanagh. In general, conditions were poor, the greatest deficit being the lack of running water. Birrell and Murie indicate that the reluctance of the rural authorities to take advantage of such financial arrangements as existed was related to "a restricted view of need and a preoccupation with the geography of votes". Changes in financial subsidy arrangements contributed to the neglect of public housing in the mid-1930s. Birrell and Murie (1980) suggest that the influence of the "rural agricultural landed element in the Unionist Party" may have influenced Stormont' s preference for building by private enterprise means.

By 1945 the position in England and Wales and that in Northern Ireland had diverged substantially. The damage to housing during the war led to a sense of urgency and in 1943 the housing survey of the Planning Advisory Board,

adopting minimum standards, estimated that 229,500 of the stock of 323,000 dwellings required repair. Immediate needs merited a doubling of the inter-war housing programme. A total of 200,000 dwellings were required to eliminate overcrowding and slums. (Birrell and Murie 1980)

Discrimination cannot be shown to have existed in a persistent and systematic fashion, but there are sufficient examples of building decisions being based on electoral calculation and of individuals receiving preferential treatment because of their politico-religious affiliations for the discriminatory element in policy to be undeniable. And this discriminatory element carried over into the period of expanded housing activity arising from the new conversion to economic and regional planning in the 1960s. (Birrell and Murie 1980)

The Campaign sought to place issues of discrimination before the Northern Ireland public. In this context, one case in 1968, now known as the Caledon affair, hit the headlines. Austin Currie, a Nationalist Member of Parliament at Stormont, squatted in a house to draw attention to alleged discrimination in respect of housing allocation policy. The house in Caledon, Co. Tyrone, had been allocated to a single Protestant girl while some large Catholic families remained unhoused. Civil rights marches followed together with violence and disturbance. Subsequent investigation by the Cameron Commission, established to consider and investigate "Disturbances in Northern Ireland", defined the first general cause of the disorders in 1969 in the following terms:

A rising sense of continuing injustice and grievance among large sections of the Catholic population in particular in Londonderry and Dungannon in respect of:

(i) the inadequacy of housing provision by certain local authorities;

(ii) unfair methods of allocation of houses built and let by such authorities, in particular refusals and omissions to adopt a points system and

(iii) misuse in certain areas of discretionary powers of allocation of houses in order to perpetuate Unionist control of the local authority.

Following the Cameron Commission report, the establishment of a new central housing authority was agreed. Among a number of reforms for the Province the new authority would place "need" at the top of its allocation priorities and establish a readily understood allocations scheme based on a points system. These priorities were accepted by the Northern Ireland Housing Trust, and the three Development Commissions as well as the majority of councils. The Housing Executive Act (Northern Ireland) 1971 brought the new Northern Ireland Housing Executive into being in October 1971. Government expectation was that the new body would operate in such a fashion that there would be "an end to allegations about sectarian discrimination in housing allocations" (Singleton 1985).

The Northern Ireland Housing Executive was established as a "single purpose, efficient and streamlined central housing authority", and by 1973, it had taken over some 155,000 dwellings and

responsibility for the building, management and allocation of all public housing for the local authorities, the Housing Trust and the Development Commissions. (Birrell and Murie)

It seems doubtful that anything in the past came even close to the population movements that have taken place since 1969. In August and September of that year more than 3,500 families were forced to leave their homes, 85% of them Catholic. Two years later, during three weeks in August 1971, a further 2,069 recorded families left their homes. Between and after these two periods of exceptional violence, a less spectacular but steady flow of families abandoned their homes from fear or intimidation.., and between 8,000 and 15,000 families in the Greater Belfast area alone.

I firmly believe that, in the matter of allocation and of the siting of new houses, the Executive since its inception has displayed complete impartiality; and that its work in both fields would stand up to any investigation by any fair-minded observer.

Currently it is reasonable to regard the Housing Executive as an agent of the Department of the Environment with no independent view of the housing problem... Thus while there is an apparent rationality in the organisation of housing provision, some of the principal features of planning, policy making and implementations are not operated on such an inoffensive, non-political basis as is often represented.

Far from leading to a substantial improvement in working class housing, the evidence of the last decade is that British ideologies in the arena of housing have become a part of the Unionist state.

3. The Present Position

A picture of present housing may be obtained from the study commissioned by the Statutory Advisory Commission on Human Rights on Public Housing carried out by the Policy Studies Institute (1989).

It is important to note in considering this data that there is disagreement about some of the methodology of the study in that assumptions were made as to which applicants and which estates may be described as "Catholic" or "Protestant".

3.1 Tenure
An analysis of data from the Continuous Household Survey (CHS) 1983-85 indicates that, as found by Rose's (1968) study, a higher proportion of Catholics than Protestants live in public housing. Conversely, a higher proportion of Protestants than Catholics are owner-occupiers. This pattern is evident too when tenure is analysed by socioeconomic groups and religion.

3.2 Segregation
The CHS data appears to confirm that Protestants are more likely than Catholics to live with their own religious group. Twenty-seven per cent of Protestant households are in wards where 90% or more residents are Protestant, and 10% are in wards where 90% or more are Catholic. Seventy-four per cent of Protestant households are in wards where 70% or more residents are Protestant, and 50% are in wards where 70% or more are Catholic. The study estimates that approximately 15% of Protestants and 21% of Catholics were prepared to live in mixed estates. Segregation would appear to be greater in Belfast than elsewhere.

There is greater segregation in the public sector than in the private sector. Among Catholic households in the public sector, 37% are in wards with 90% or more Catholics, compared with 18% in owner-occupied property, and 16% in privately rented housing. There are similar though smaller differences in the case of Protestants. The researchers questioned whether this difference could be due to the fact that the public sector is weighted towards the working class, and the private sector is weighted towards the middle class. The researchers concluded that the operation of the public sector encourages in some way, not readily definable, segregation between Catholics and Protestants to a greater extent than the private sector.

3.3 Household Size and Type
The average number of people in Catholic households is greater than the average in Protestant households (3.62 and 2.52, respectively). Catholic households, however, do not tend to occupy larger accommodation - 5% of Protestant households were overcrowded, compared to 16% of Catholic households (see Table 10, no. of bedrooms). The average number of rooms per person is considerably higher for Protestants than Catholics, as shown in Table 10, and this remains true for all socioeconomic groups, and all types of tenure (see also Table 9). So, in terms of density of occupation, Protestants tend to have a higher quality of accommodation than Catholic families.

A higher proportion of Catholics than Protestants live in terraced housing (45% and 35%, respectively) and a higher proportion of Protestants than Catholics live in detached or semi-detached houses (55% and 47%, respectively). The proportions living in flats are similar. When public housing is examined separately, more Catholics than Protestants live in properties built after 1964 (55% and 43%, respectively), and more Catholics live in terraced houses than flats.

Source: Smith, D.J. and Chambers, G. (1991) Inequality in Northern Ireland. Oxford, Clarendon Press.

In fact, when social class is held constant in this way, the tendency for public housing to be more segregated than private housing becomes more marked. Where previously these differences were clear in the case of Catholics, but very small in the case of Protestants, now clear differences are shown for both groups.

Source: Smith, D.H. and Chambers, G. (1991) Inequality in Northern Ireland. Oxford, Clarendon Press.


3.4 Amenities and Quality of Accommodation
Ninety-three per cent of households have sole use of all four of the following amenities - bath, cold water, kitchen, flush toilet.

There was little difference in the perceived quality of accommodation between the two groups in terms of problems like draughts, damp, condensation, dry rot, traffic and noise. The only difference of any note was that 26% of Catholics and 20% of Protestants have trouble with damp.

Availability of local facilities appeared similar for both groups. Overall, Protestants had a small advantage.

In the public sector there was no difference in the amount of rent paid by Catholics and Protestants. There were indications, in the private sector, that Catholics paid higher rents for poorer accommodation.


4. Contemporary Issues

Several key questions require to be explored:

4.1 How is Discrimination Defined for the Purposes of Housing?
Current legislation on religious and political discrimination in Northern Ireland does not cover housing. Smith and Chambers (1989) took their definition from the Fair Employment Act and the Race Relations Act. The definitions are similar to those in the Sex Discrimination Order.

Direct Discrimination occurs where "on the grounds of religious belief or political opinion, a person treats one person less favourably in any circumstances than he treats or would treat any other person in those circumstances".

Indirect Discrimination is defined as "the use of a condition or requirement which is such that a considerably smaller proportion of one than of another group can comply with it, and which is to the complainant's detriment". The onus would then be on the other party to justify this condition or requirement. An example of indirect discrimination would be to introduce a residence qualification excluding people who had lived for less than 10 years in an area. This would be discriminatory if a higher proportion of one group than another had recently moved into the area.

4.2 Has the Housing Executive been Successful in Removing Housing Policy from Sectarian Politics?
It is generally agreed that the Housing Executive has been successful in this respect. Smith and Chambers' study (1989) of people's perceptions indicates that only 10% of adults thought that the Housing Executive did not give equal treatment to applications from Catholics and Protestants; only 3% of those applying to rent felt that they had been unfairly treated because of their religion. It was more common for people to think the building programme favoured one group over another (18%) and most people who thought this felt that it favoured Catholics rather than Protestants. The report does, however, call on the Housing Executive to check the effect of its policies on equality of opportunity for both the Protestant and Catholic communities.

The Standing Advisory Committee on Human Rights (SACHR), in response to Smith and Chambers' findings, is

of the view that PSI's recommendation "that the NIHE should now move towards explicitly and openly monitoring the results of its policies in the light of the need to achieve equal opportunities" deserves careful consideration. (SACHR 1990)

that systematic monitoring would create an erroneous impression that religious affiliation is part of the decision making process and that if it were required by Government to change its stance there would be hostile public reaction.

is in no doubt that procedures for ensuring that the way the decision making process impacts on each of the two main communities should be introduced. (SACHR 1990)

4.3 Is Public Sector Housing for Catholics and Protestants of the Same Quality?
This was the first of the three questions which Smith and Chambers sought to answer. The sources of information used were the Continuous Household Survey 1983-85; the Public Sector Maintenance Survey 1985-86; applicants registered on the waiting list at the end of 1987; and allocations made during 1987.

Two measures were used in consideration of this question - the costs involved in bringing property up to an acceptable standard of repair and the costs of improving the property to make it comparable with current new housing.

In the Belfast area, Catholic estates had a much higher incidence of repair defects though the improvement costs were comparable to those for the whole of Northern Ireland.

Source: Smith, DJ. and Chambers, G. (1991) Inequality in Northern Ireland. Oxford, Clarendon Press, p. 351.

In the district towns, the general picture was that houses were in a better state of repair and came closer to the basic dwelling standard. The repair conditions of Protestant estates were slightly better than of Catholic estates, though the reverse was true regarding improvement conditions. In rural areas the repair conditions were comparable with those of Northern Ireland as a whole, though there was a tendency for properties to fall further below the basic dwelling standard than in the whole of Northern Ireland.

The general conclusion was that Catholic estates in the Belfast district area and the immediate surrounding area were in a worse state of repair than Protestant estates. Repair costs were found to be highest for older properties and for flats. Could it be that Catholics tended to occupy these sort of dwellings? Catholic estates were found to contain 71% houses of the terrace or bungalow type, compared with 67% for Protestant estates, and 40% of houses on Catholic estates had been built since 1971, compared with 27% on Protestant estates. This explanation, then, was obviously not valid.

In summary, however, in 1985-86, Catholic estates were in a worse state of repair than Protestant estates and repair schedules would need in future to take account of this.

4.4 Do Catholics and Protestants Have EqualAccess to Public Housing?
This was the second major question which Smith and Chambers' study addressed.

Comparisons were made between the proportion of "Catholics" (those stating a preference for a Catholic estate) on the waiting-list who were rehoused, with the proportion of "Protestants" (those stating a preference for a Protestant estate) on the waiting-list who were rehoused. In 1987, for the Belfast urban area where the greatest disparity was evident,

allocations to Protestant estates were 42% of applicants preferring such estates, compared with 23% for Catholics. This suggests an almost 2:1 disparity in the rehousing chances of those preferring Protestant and Catholic estates. (Smith and Chambers 1991)

Could an explanation be that Protestants showed a greater need than Catholics? The points system, after all, was designed to give priority to those in need, rather than to give equality to Catholics and Protestants. Properties on Catholic estates are, however, less likely to become free for new tenants, and this may be a significant factor in allocation possibilities. In 1987 the proportion of Catholic and Protestant applicants on the A-list (priority cases who are not pointed) was the same. On the B-list with 61 or more points, the higher proportion of applicants were Catholic (28%) as compared with Protestants (17%). Therefore Catholics demonstrated a greater need for housing.

Housing congestion influences allocation, with small families with children having the best prospects. For the A-list the disparity in chances of rehousing is approximately 2:1 Protestant:Catholic for every household type both in Belfast and in the Province as a whole. For B-list applicants, Protestants have a substantially better chance in four of the six household types, the exceptions having low chances generally - large adult households and older households without children.

Another explanation might be that Catholics accept housing on mixed estates and Protestant estates in greater numbers than Protestants. This would not be supported by the evidence. In the Belfast area the proportion of allocations to mixed estates is less than the proportion of applications, so the availability of mixed estates allocations to applicants for whom they were not a first preference would be nil. Moreover, Belfast is the most segregated area of Northern Ireland with 53% of households across all tenures living in wards where at least 90% of the population are of the same religion, so it is not likely that large numbers of Catholics would be asking for mixed estates.

The most likely explanation is that the turnover of stock is greater in Protestant estates; in Belfast, Catholic allocations were 23% and Catholic estates represented 27.1% of the housing stock. Protestant allocations were 42% and Protestant estates represented 54.6% of stock. The profile of the Protestant householder is that he is older and more affluent. It could be that Protestants move out of houses in the public sector at a greater rate than Catholics, in order to purchase in the private sector or move to alternative accommodation such as an old people's home, but there is no available evidence to substantiate this suggestion.

For whatever reason, the general conclusion is that there is a clear disparity in the chances of being rehoused between those preferring Protestant and Catholic estates, in favour of the Protestant group. At the same time these results present a number of puzzling features.

(a) If Protestants are being rehoused faster than Catholics, it would seem logical that rehoused Protestants would have a lower level of points, and yet the evidence does not support this suggestion.

(b) It could also be expected that the length of time spent on waiting-lists would be shorter for Protestants since their chances of being housed are greater. Yet the evidence showed little difference, though it was based on statistics for group A and B applicants together (group A - priority cases - would be rehoused more quickly). Smith and Chambers have concluded that there is a clear disparity in the chances of being rehoused, between Protestant and Catholic, in favour of Protestants, though this is not confirmed by analysis of waiting time, and is only weakly confirmed by an analysis of the assessed housing need of those who were rehoused in 1987.

4.5 Has the Public Sector Housing System Encouraged Integration, Segregation, or Neither?
This is the third major question posed by Smith and Chambers' study. They show that there is a tendency for Catholics and Protestants to be more segregated from one another in the public sector than in the private sector. The researchers offer the following explanations:

(a) public housing could have been built in areas already defined as belonging to one group;

(b) public housing is more likely to be built as large estates, rather than as small groups of houses, and so labelling has more disastrous consequences;

(c) there are proportionally more non-manual households in the public sector, though there is not a very great differential. The study of perceptions and views showed that there was a greater preference among manual than non-manual households to be in segregated areas;

(d) NIHE do not have a policy of promoting integration. An early annual report states:

We believe that people should have a maximum freedom of choice in where they wish to live. The Executive does not believe that forced integration is any more desirable than a policy of deliberate segregation. We can only hope that the provision of an attractive mixture of housing and a change of the sociopolitical as well as the physical environment may ease the problem of polarisation. (Smith and Chambers 1991)

Segregation of Protestant and Catholic has led to an implicit recognition of the inevitability of allocating dwellings on the basis of "two" waiting lists, one Catholic, and the other Protestant. . . The NIHE has in many instances had no option but to sort its waiting lists into Roman Catholic and Protestant and provide separate housing sites in different parts of town for the two groups.

The findings raise the possibility that the policies and practices of the Housing Executive are a factor contributing to residential segregation between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland.

4.6 Does the Pattern of Segregation Promote Violence?
There are wide variations in the amount of residential segregation in the Province. A study of 29 towns each with a population over 5,000 in Northern Ireland (Poole 1982, 1983, 1990) demonstrated that only eight were highly segregated. These were, in order of degree of segregation, Armagh, Lurgan, Belfast, Derry, Omagh, Newry, Kilkeel and Dungannon. Poole has also done work on areas of high violence and these towns fall within his list of eight high-violence areas. Poole suggests that the connection is not the degree of segregation but the size of the ghetto Catholic population which is the best indicator of potential violence. He suggests that where there are large Catholic majority populations a climate for violence exists. Hamilton (1989) points out that segregation is in part a response to fear and the long period of conflict may have cemented situations in ways which earlier and shorter incidents did not. The implications in terms of lack of contact, knowledge and understanding between the two communities have to be seriously addressed.

4.1 Has Preoccupation with the Conflict in Northern Ireland Led to a Neglect of Other Basic Housing Issues?
Much of the literature on housing in Northern Ireland has been preoccupied with the impact of the troubles. Differences between actual developments in the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland are regarded as largely superficial although slum clearance in Northern Ireland is said to be 10 years behind developments elsewhere. Key elements in the housing problem were identified by Brett (1986) as an urgent need to upgrade and modernise housing stock; to tackle deterioration in stock and to ensure that worn-out terrace housing, primitive rural cottages and inner-city block flats are replaced. Murie (1988) drew attention to the well-established demographic trends in the Province, and Ogle (1989) specified the need to attend to "the rising number of people wanting to form households of their own, the demise of the larger family and the continuing rise in the numbers of the elderly". Attention is drawn to the fact that the Housing Executive waiting-list does not match any longer the resources of the stock. In 1986 it was made up of 34% single people, 30% small families, 25% OAPs and 11% large families. These figures have considerable implications for the development of housing strategies in the 1990s.

The annual report of the Housing Executive (1990) records its preoccupation with the homelessness legislation (6,620 applications in the first year of operation, of whom 3,099 were granted Al status and 2,556 rehoused by 31 March 1990) and highlights further areas of particular need - the single homeless, long-term hostel residents, and improved contact with statutory and voluntary agencies in pursuit of the purposes of community care. The impact of People First (1990), the creation of Rural Priority Areas, and the upgrading of stock are major priorities as the Executive moves into the 1990s.

Exercises