From top: Construction of modular homes, Ballymun; Dr Rory Hearne

What to ask candidates on the doorstep about housing.

Should they come to your home.

Should you have a home.

Dr Rory Hearne writes:

The election has been called – so now you are probably thinking about who you might for and what are the issues you should think about in deciding how to vote…(And of course you are going to vote – the future of the country is at stake…well, maybe not quite but it is a bloody important election to decide who runs the country for the next five years!) .

When it comes to thinking about why and how you might vote – shouldn’t the current housing crisis be a key deciding factor?

You are probably affected by it yourself – either as a renter, someone looking to buy, already paying a huge mortgage or maybe you are homeless and living in emergency accommodation.
Despite all the talk of a ‘recovery’ the housing crisis is getting worse. It should be a national emergency.

Having a home (and particularly fair rent and home ownership) are issues that have defined this country from the colonial times and the famine evictions to the Celtic Tiger and property crash that busted the country. Today housing is again is an issue that is defining us as to what type of country we are and what we want to be.

The housing crisis is a scandal that the government wants to ignore but it could be the very thing that stops them from being re-elected. The failure to address the housing crisis could very well be Fine Gael & Labour’s Achille’s heel.

Here are some of the groups affected by the housing crisis:

Renters facing high rents (at the moment in Dublin there are reports of ‘bidding’ wars between renters trying to find a place to live)

Young people and families unable to buy a home due to rising house prices (couples are being forced to put off having children while they try get a home)

People in mortgage arrears or mortgage distress (there are still 37,000 homeowners in long term arrears and facing repossession – we don’t hear much of their plight – do we? But then they might interfere with all the positive talk of ‘recovery’!
Over 90,000 on social housing waiting lists –stuck in poor quality or unaffordable private rented accommodation

1,500 children and their families are homeless. At the current rate of families becoming homeless there will be more than 6,000 children in emergency accommodation by 2017.

Travellers left in substandard accommodation & asylum seekers left in poor conditions in Direct Provision

Here are three questions you might want to ask the politicians about the housing crisis when they come knocking on your door:

Question 1: What has the government done about the housing crisis in their five years of power?

Question 2. What could a new government do to solve the housing crisis?

Question3. Will a new Fine Gael and Labour government do what is needed to be done?

To help you give them a grilling after they’ve given you their ‘wishy-washy’ response I will now give you some detailed answers to challenge them.

My answer to Q 1.

The Fine Gael/Labour government actually made a bad housing crisis worse. Here’s how they did it:

They wouldn’t stand up to the landlords and so they didn’t control private rent increases or sufficiently strengthen tenant’s rights to longer leases. The two year ‘freeze’ is doing nothing to stop new rental property price increases and when it finishes next year rents will sky rocket again.

 

They cut the budgets for social housing/local authority building which meant that over the period of government they had the lowest level of social housing building in over 40 years (even lower than the recession in the 1980s) (see graph above).

They didn’t increase the rent allowance to match rising rents which forced families and children into homelessness

They left 100,000s struggling in mortgage arrears with huge personal stress and facing repossession.

They wouldn’t challenge the property industry and so allowed developers and builders sit on vacant land. The government introduced a vacant site tax but it doesn’t come into force until 2019! So builders can keep supply low to force prices to rise so they can increase their profits.

They failed to use NAMA to provide affordable or social housing. The government continued to support NAMA (created by Fianna Fail) to sell off housing (such as the promised 20,000 ‘starter homes’) and land to international vulture funds rather than for Irish people who need the housing

They privatised social housing provision onto the private rented sector– which has reduced private rental supply. Three quarters of the housing in the governments ‘social housing’ strategy is to come from the private rented sector.

They have helped create the ‘shoe box’ tenement apartments of the future. They reduced housing building standards by lowering the apartment size regulations.

They have opposed the new Central Bank mortgage lending rules that are keeping house prices affordable. The new rules are the one positive change that has been implemented – it has slowed down house prices rising and thus keeping them more affordable. Yet this is the very policy the government (and Michael Noonan in particular) opposed.

Answer to Q 2.

So what could a new government do differently to solve the housing crisis?

The core of an alternative housing policy would be for the government to do six key things:

1) Implement rent control/certainty –where rent increases are linked to inflation and/or affordability & quality indexes) & give tenants the right to long term secure leases

2) Create a new Homes and Housing Agency (NAMA could be changed into this) to build affordable and social housing.

3) Create a new State Housing Bank to finance housing and provide affordable mortgages for people.

4) Hold a referendum to put The Right to housing and a home in the constitution

5) Change NAMA’s mandate to invest in social and affordable housing rather than offices and selling to vulture funds.

6) Bring forward the vacant site tax to force builders and developers use vacant land to build and introduce the famous 1974 Kenny Report to control the speculation on the price of land

This would create a housing system that is based on meeting people’s need for a home and not based onrelying on the private market – which is the property industry and speculators – which has failed over and over to provide affordable and secure housing. The private housing market just provides super profits for developers, banks, estate agents, solicitors and speculators.

We need to move away from mortgaged home ownership and housing being an asset of wealth, a commodity, a speculative piece of ‘property’. Instead the housing market should be strongly regulated with price and profit controls and there should be a new approach to funding provision of affordable, ‘not for profit’, cooperative and social housing.

That will mean standing up to the property development industry, landlords and all those who currently profit from the existing housing mess. It also means Irish people changing their attitude to property and ownership and understanding that the current obsession with home ownership mainly benefits the wealthy, the banks and property industry.

Irish housing system should, in the first instance, ensure affordable, high quality, homes are available to every citizen.

Answer to Q 3.

These housing problems didn’t start with this Government. Governments during the Celtic Tiger boom years lead by Fianna Fail also caused the crisis by prioritising the ‘mortgaged home ownership’ developer-led housing system. When the crash happened they created NAMA to bail out developers, bondholders and the banks but left ordinary people to pay for it all.

But Fine Gael and Labour continued Fianna Fail’s housing policies and have shown they won’t do anything radically different on housing policy. It just shows there is no real political difference between these three establishment parties.

Fine Gael is a party of the landlords, the wealthy and property industry. Interestingly, it has the highest number of TDs who are landlords with 24 TDs. Fianna Fáil has 12 landlords, Labour has ten, while Minister for Environment Alan Kelly is also a “landlord”.

Fine Gael who are strong believers in the ‘right-wing’, laissez-faire, ‘free-market’ approach to economics don’t believe in interfering with landlords and land owners ‘right’ to profit from property speculation and ownership. So who’s interests will they represent?

The Labour party have shown that they are either unable or unwilling to do anything different (the best example of this is Labour Minister for Environment, Alan Kelly’s failure to achieve rent control in the face of Michael Noonan’s opposition).

Of course they will blame the Irish people for voting for these policies.

So when they come knocking this time tell them you want something different – you want housing to be a human right, provided to meet people’s needs and not the greed and profits of estate agents, developers, landlords and vulture funds. And vote with who you think will do that.

Maybe then we will get a government that actually does something positive about Ireland’s permanent (and repeating) housing crisis.

Dr Rory Hearne is a Senior Policy Analyst with TASC, the Think-Tank for Action on Social Change. His column appears here every Wednesday. Follow Rory on Twitter: @roryhearne

Top pic: Rollingnews