The Northern Ireland Housing Executive is the public housing authority for Northern Ireland. It is Northern Ireland's largest social housing landlord, and the enforcing authority for those parts of housing orders that involve houses with multiple occupants, houses that are unfit, and housing conditions. The NIHE employed 2, 865 persons as of 31 March 2020 Prior to the establishment of the Housing Executive, public housing in Northern Ireland was managed primarily by local councils. 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". This largely took the form of discrimination against Catholics to ensure Unionist control of councils, opposition to which was a major plank of the Northern Ireland civil rights movement of the late 1960s. 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". Lord Cameron's report concluded: A rising sense of continuing injustice and grievance among large sections of the Catholic population in Northern Ireland, in particular in Derry and Dungannon, in respect of (i) 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 in determining priorities and making allocations (iii) misuse in certain cases of discretionary powers of allocation of houses in order to perpetuate Unionist control of the local authority The Housing Executive was established by the Housing Executive Act (Northern Ireland) 1971. A single all-purpose housing authority for Northern Ireland had been advocated as early as 1964 by the Northern Ireland Labour Party
