Has the Northern Ireland Executive's Shared Housing Programme been able to create sustainable mixed communities through new build social housing?

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

The provision of social housing can help to ensure that enough low-cost homes are available for those in need, particularly those on low incomes (Power, 1999). But does social housing also have a role to play in building community relations? The Good Friday Agreement includes a specific commitment to the promotion of 'mixed housing' in Northern Ireland where people from both sides of the sectarian divide reside together. O'Leary and McGarry contend that 'a sustained period of voluntary inter-group cooperation should reduce inter-community divisions' (2004: 36). In the decades that have followed the Good Friday Agreement, the success or otherwise of the delivery of 'Shared Housing,' which forms part of the Northern Ireland Executive's Draft Programme for Government 2016 - 2021, can be seen as a test of this theory. The Northern Ireland Housing Executive (NIHE) has committed to delivering 800 new homes in shared communities (NIHE, 2020). But there has yet to be an in-depth study of the progress of these projects. Engaging in a qualitative study using semi-structured interviews and participant observation, I want to examine how successful and sustainable these new communities have become from the point of view of the residents themselves. In particular, I want to evaluate the success of the long-term Good Relations Plans that have been drawn up to steer these projects on the right course, and how they match up to the expectations and lived experience of residents. This proposal offers a potential bridge between contemporary research on social housing and wider research on race, ethnicity and community segregation. Furthermore, as an 'extreme' example of a case study of community relations, this project could offer a particularly useful contribution to ideas about tackling other difficult community relations issues in other regions.