From top: Emergency Beds for homeless people set up in St Catherine’s Community Sports Centre, Dublin 8 by the Peter McVerry Trust yesterday; Dr Rory Hearne
Homelessness continues to rise and tens of thousands more face potential homelessness from vulture fund take-over of mortgages in arrears.
Despite all the policy documents and plans – the housing and homelessness crisis continues to worsen. And this is five years into an economic ‘recovery’ and the fastest growth rates in Europe.
Despite all the claims of ‘complexity’ the reason we are in this crisis is relatively straightforward, as are the solutions.
The cause lies in the fact that successive governments for almost thirty years have withdrawn from the state directly building and supporting the provision of social and affordable housing.
The years of austerity (2008-2015) saw that policy brought to its ultimate conclusion – the effective cessation of building of social and affordable housing.
The other cause is the prioritisation of the interests of Irish banks, financial institutions and property investors (landlords, developers, vulture funds, Real Estate Investment Funds etc) over the housing needs of people.
Finally, the problem is housing policy is driven by financial and economic goals rather than fulfilling the housing needs and right to housing of our population.
The result – we now rely principally on the private market to supply housing in Ireland.
The problem – the private housing market is made up of multiple competing interests and is inherently dysfunctional, uncoordinated, inefficient and fails to provide ‘affordable’ housing – as its goal is to maximise profits and, therefore, prices and rents.
The result – unacceptable levels of homelessness. Which continue to rise year after year. The latest homelessness figures show another indictment of the continued failure of government policy to deal with crisis.
In the two years since Jan 2016 there are additional 1,437 children homeless – a 78% increase in that two years. That means over two children were made newly homeless every day in this two years.
The figures also show the expanding geographical reach of the homelessness crisis as homelessness increased in 22 out of 26 counties including Dublin, Kildare, Meath, Wicklow, Laois, Westmeath, Limerick, Louth, Monaghan, Cavan, Donegal (where it increased by 37%), Waterford (15%), Carlow, Kilkenny, Tipperary, Wexford, Cork, Kerry, Galway, Mayo and Roscommon.
In the two years since January 2016 there an additional 633 families became homeless and entered emergency accommodation – a 71% increase in just two years.
The majority of people are disgusted and ashamed of this – that our fellow human beings are treated with such indignity – and that this wealthy state is so unequal that it does not ensure all its people have access to the basic need and right of an affordable, secure, home.
And that is why the government and it’s cheerleaders in various policy and academic circles are trying to ‘normalise’ homelessness and to try blame those in mortgage arrears as trying to ‘get a house for free’. They want us all to blame the victims of the housing crisis, austerity and economic crash.
It is all to try divide society – between those who ‘get up early’ and work hard to pay their mortgage and those who are ‘sponging’ to get a ‘free’ house.
This is an unethical and wrong approach.
There are very very few who get a house ‘for free’ in this country – everyone in social housing pays a rent, everyone in receipt of the Housing Assistance Payment pays a rent, those in mortgage arrears have a debt and paid at some point and will pay again when their income and housing situation becomes sustainable.
The lie and the myth at the heart of this argument is that somehow the middle class home-owners will lose out if the government builds more social and affordable housing and delivers on the right to housing for people like increasing tenant protections.
The fact is that our housing system is more expensive than countries which have more social and affordable housing.
Our housing crisis now affects families who are working and can’t afford to buy a home, it affects students unable to find affordable housing, it affects companies unable to source workers, or people who can’t move and get a job in the cities.
Rising rents and house prices is ‘lost’ money’ from the real economy – the main beneficiaries are a minority wealthy landlord and financial elite.
The reality needs to dawn on the generation seeking to buy housing – for most of them the only possibility of accessing affordable housing will be if the government builds it.
And that’s why your concern with rising homelessness should rightly be one of an ethical and moral disgust with the treatment of your fellow human beings.
And the solutions are common – for the government to engage the entire machinery of the state to undertake a massive social and affordable house building programme.
There is no doubt that the biggest fear of the government and wider state and property establishment is the emergence of a citizen’s movement on housing similar to the water movement.
Access to affordable and secure housing, and particularly an opposition to evictions, is strongly embedded in our national psyche. Nothing stirs our passions more than home – unfortunately that has been turned into an obsession with rising property prices and housing speculation.
But as more and more people are excluded from our broken housing system this could be changing. There is increasing demand for a change in direction – for housing to be provided as a home primarily rather than a speculative asset for investors.
Just look at the increasing citizen and political action being taken to try respond to the housing crisis. From protests (see Uplift’s on-line petition here) against the sell-off of loans to Vulture Funds and proposals for legislation to set up a Housing Co-op to buy the loans.
To the Dublin Tenants Form on tenant security taking place on March 13 (see here:), to the national protest march for Housing is a Human Right on April 7 (see here) organised by the National Homeless and Housing Coalition, to the Irish Congress of Trade Union’s Charter for Housing Rights.
Such a growing wave of citizen action has the potential to change the direction of this sinking ship.
Dr Rory Hearne is a policy analyst, academic, social justice campaigner. He writes here in a personal capacity. Follow Rory on Twitter: @roryhearne
Rollingnews
Have rough sleepers now been de-classified, and not now included in homeless figures?
That question was put to Russell Murphy’s grandson the TD
They have another list
The clue why its not solved is simple
Its a growth industry and a big earner
In our taxes each year a sum of 30 odd grand per homeless is spent
Much goes to these charities and services that have complemented the so called needs
genuine question
is English your first language
now I’m not one to talk as I have two languages wrestling in my cramped mind
however it would explain a lot
He writes like Yoda’s scriptwriter
or an engineer ( no offense to the wonderful binary people out there)
Yes it is
Point is these facts are in the public domain
Spelling or no spelling I touched a nerve
Are you one of the people working in that growth industry
And I said its complex
Lets start about the reasons why a house costs one third to deliver in the UK then the taxes the insurances the hoarding of land and the distressed property sold off to vulture funds at discount when they could be sold to councils or handed over by banks in payment for what they owe the taxpayer
If that was done the thousands upon thousands provided for affordable housing would solve the problem overnight
But alas well educated spelling dual language types like you could not achieve such a simple solution as its above your head but I congratulate such a smart person like you for your contribution
It’s not the spelling,
it’s the ramblings.
I’d love to be able to grasp your point but your words all run together in a jumble,
may I suggest breathing and punctuation?
and no, no nerve
No business interests in this country,
it’s just your delivery and negativity hinders any point you are trying to convey
It’s written like some sort of weird poem. Is that how you talk too?
ah if it’s poetry all is forgiven lol
…it’s like the good old days when some accounts seemed to be operated by different people on a shift basis…the ‘Baz’ account was like Leo’s SCUnit…
There is another angle to the housing crisis, government tax. Whether that would reduce the rents is another story but the state profiting from these obscene rents is definitely a factor.
A comparison between the rent tax in Ireland against international norms would be interesting.
Actually a company is allowed to claim all things against costs of running their businesses and pay taxes on profit not losses
There must be rent controls because tenants are being screwed to the wall and with little rights
If they cannot make money then they should sell and stop winging
here is a poem to cheer you up
I laughed at my thought,
if it persisted I may become overwrought,
I had on clothes, the room was square,
I was NOT oyster meat, my head had hair.
Just as my racing mind was slowing,
The room shook as if from a great wind blowing,
the ceiling exploded. Down came two walls.
I found myself staring at two huge jaws.
Do you mean whinging? ‘cos winging is difficult on a house, I would have thought. See that, would have, not would of.
Glandore must be mortified.
:D
Glandore is a lovely spot so it is. They have my sympathies
I doubt david does his scutter merchant act around them, they’d have no truck with that kind of thing.