Government housing targets 'unrealistic', warns housing policy analyst

The virtual conference called Working to Eliminate Homelessness by 2030, hosted by the Simon Communities of Ireland as part of their Simon Week 2021, heard that in the four-and-a-half years up to 2020, a total of just 4,326 social homes were built. Photo: Eamonn Farrell/RollingNews.ie

The ambition in the State’s new social housing plan of building 9,500 social housing units every year is “unrealistic”, according to a respected housing policy analyst.

Mel Reynolds, a top Dublin architect who routinely makes submissions to select Oireachtas committees on housing, said this is because of the failures of the last housing policy.

Then, the government had vowed to build 47,000 social housing units over six years. Instead, Mr Reynolds pointed out, little over 12% of that target had been met by December last year. Mr Reynolds said that, as a result, this is a sign that little will change with the new policy.

“In the next year or two, we're not going to see any significant change from current housing policy,” he said.

He was speaking at Working to Eliminate Homelessness by 2030, a virtual conference hosted by the Simon Communities of Ireland as part of their Simon Week 2021.

Lorcan Sirr Lecturer and Social Housing analyst states at the Simon Week Conference 'If the measure of success of Housing for All is increasing supply the plan won't work. It needs to be the right supply, in the right place and at the right time'

— Simon Communities of Ireland (@SimonCommunity) September 27, 2021

It was opened by Housing Minister Darragh O'Brien, who launched Housing For All, the government’s housing policy to 2030 earlier this month. On September 2, he promised the State would provide 90,000 social homes by 2030.

This includes over 10,000 social housing homes each year over the next five years, with an average of 9,500 of those being new-build social homes. He said the plan aims to end long-term leasing of social housing by local authorities and it would “work towards eradicating Homelessness by 2030”.

In addition, the plan includes “continued funding for local authorities to acquire additional land for new-build public housing”.

In 2016, with the launch of Rebuilding Ireland, the then Housing Minister Simon Coveney promised: “Over the next six years, we are going to provide some 47,000 new social houses.” 

Mr Reynolds told the Simon Week 2021 conference, which was chaired by Irish Examiner News Editor Deirdre O’Shaughnessy, that he had done some “interesting” number crunching since then. He pointed out that in the four-and-a-half years up to 2020, a total of just 4,326 social homes were built.

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And in addition, he said approved housing bodies built about 1,400. In 2018, the four Dublin councils had enough land for about 29,370 dwellings.

He also pointed out that during the four-and-a-half years in which 5,700 new social houses were built, another 10,000 homes built by private developers were bought.

“Most of the headline figures we hear when ministers and officials are talking about 1,000s of units being built, are “turnkeys” - which are new homes developed on private lands and are purchased by the State or approved housing projects,” he said.

“So in the same period of the 5,700 actual builds, over 10,000 turnkey homes were purchased from the private sector. I think the high point of this was that in 2019 over 3,700 new homes were purchased from the market.”