Housing and Communities' Inequalities in Northern Ireland:Summary Report

The Equality Commission for Northern Ireland (ECNI) commissioned the University of York to review the evidence and data on housing and communities’ inequalities for people associated with each of the Section 75 equality grounds of the Northern Ireland Act 1998. Since the 2007 ECNI Key Inequalities in Northern Ireland report, the Northern Ireland housing system has undergone profound shocks arising from the financial crisis and its aftermath. Against this backdrop, the report compares to what extent different groups of people are able to access adequate and sustainable housing to identify key inequalities. The review comprised a comprehensive literature review of housing policy and research and of different groups of people in Northern Ireland; a review of a range of data resources; 12 telephone interviews with local stakeholders; and an expert seminar to discuss the interim findings. There are a number of caveats to the report, in that the evidence base was stronger for some equality grounds than others, and the descriptive data utilised is limited by the analysis being unable to disentangle the impacts of individual equality grounds from others, and from a lack of time series or longitudinal data.