The news announced this week by the Minister for Communities that the housing executive is to undergo the biggest shake-up in its 50-year history, is one of the most positive developments in the north in decades.
Good, affordable, maintained housing makes all of society better, countries with properly regulated housing sectors have better outcomes in health, education and life expectancy.
The housing executive has not built houses since the mid-1990s, instead large housing associations have taken on this role.
Minister Carál Ní Chuilín, said on Tuesday change was needed to increase the supply of social homes, something few people would disagree with.
She said the housing executive would be given powers to borrow money to build more homes and to improve existing stock.
Social housing in Northern Ireland has been in crisis for decades, the demand so high in some areas that families can remain in hostels or substandard rental accommodation for years.
A few years back I did a tour of some of the worst cases in north Belfast, one of the areas of highest need.
I spoke to young women who looked tired and worried, their children ate dinner and did homework in bed because it was too cold to sit anywhere else.
One young woman in a flat with electric heating that devoured her small weekly allowance, moved a mattress into the living room at night to try and save money. Her little boy had a minor disability and required regular hospital treatment.
His disability made him unstable on his feet but the landlord wouldn't allow her to change the outdated wooden armed furniture and the child regularly banged his head on the corner of the chairs, much to her distress.
She told me how she was determined to better her life and his, she was teaching her little boy to write his own name before he started nursery. ''I have to try harder because people judge young mothers like me,'' she said.
She'd been told it could be two or three years until she was housed permanently.
For too long our housing has been sectarianised, house building has been blocked in areas of need in case 'themmuns' might move in.
Intimidation points are exploited by criminals and paramilitaries, who move house every time they fancy a bigger garden by having their mates send them a threat.
Yet all the while a young woman with a disabled child sleeps on a mattress on the floor to save money.
How 'threats' are verified has been a problematic issue that has been allowed to fester for years. Building new houses without addressing this risks allowing the gangsters to take over brand new estates at the expense of those in greatest need.
The minister's plan also includes a review of the housing executive's house sales policy.
She said that having policies of trying to increase social housing while also selling social houses at a discount means "we have one policy that is in direct conflict with another".
The Right to Buy scheme was a populist and highly profitable idea from Margaret Thatcher.
It was a key Conservative policy in the 80s, but it unravelled a safety net that provided tens of millions with affordable housing.
The consequences are most visible in London where working class communities were eradicated as social housing became private stock and was sold off at inflated prices.
The gentrification of entire communities destroyed a way of life and ultimately led to the situation that exists today with large parts of major capital cities now owned by landlords and rented out at extortionate costs.
Just as Carál Ní Chuilín was making her announcement in the Stormont chamber an email landed in my inbox from a company specialising in acquiring properties on behalf of investors currently unable to travel.
It declared proudly that 22 per cent of prime London properties are purchased sight unseen by overseas buyers.
Leaving aside why their algorithm decided to contact me - who at this stage will be leaving my children a large collection of shoes as their inheritance - this is the shameful legacy of a policy of inflating property costs and rents that started in the 1980s.
Owning a home is an aspiration for any young family and that can only be helped by the minister's plan to start building more social housing.
In a supply and demand market as supply increases and demand for social housing is met, the private sector will have to adapt accordingly, making starter homes affordable and within the gift of young couples starting out on life.
In a pandemic good news can often be lost in the gloom of lockdown misery, but this announcement has the potential to change life for the better for generations to come and that is to be applauded.
