Case study in detail Background Northern Ireland is quite damp. Belfast Seven Towers is situ­ated in the New Lodge experiences more than 200 rainy days area of Belfast, which has consistently annually and the city is cold during winter been rated one of the most deprived in months. Staying dry and warm can be a terms of unmet housing needs in Northern challenge. Ireland. The residents of the Seven Towers have regularly reported mold on the walls The Seven Towers is a social housing of their flats as a result of dampness. In pro­ject in an area of North Belfast that winter the flats stay colder than what is has a major­ity Catholic population. The considered healthy by the World Health Catholic population in Northern Ireland Organization (WHO). has historically experienced higher rates of and the heating system is inefficient and unemployment and greater poverty than expensive to run. Insulation is poor conflict with their right to an adequate standard of living, includ­ing the right to housing. Using indicators and benchmarks that they have developed on the basis of international human rights standards, residents have been able to monitor whether or not their rights are being progressively realized. Among those indicators are the percentage of previously reported damp units still experiencing problems with damp, and the percentage of residents dissatisfied with the existing heating system. have Protestants. In 2002, 80 percent of those in “housing stress” (i.e., with the greatest need for housing) in North Belfast were Catho­lic. By 2008 the number of Catholics so positioned had increased, while the city had also experienced a significant in­crease in the numbers (although still much smaller) of Protestants in “housing stress.” Seven Towers Residents Group and human rights indicators Since 2006 the Seven Towers Residents Group has collaborated with Participation and the Practice of Rights (PPR) to address their housing problems. They use a human rights-based approach to campaign for change around identified problems that In 2011 PPR learned from Seven Towers residents that: -45 percent of those surveyed had had problems with dampness over the past two years; and -89 percent were unhappy with the heating, with 85 percent of those unhappy considering the heating to be too expensive.