We need state agency from which we can rent, not buy, A-rated homes

The rental home is the gift that keeps on giving to the landlord, writes Victoria White

I SOMETIMES think I am my house. Remember that bit in Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman when the men turn into their bicycles? Well my house’s “mollycules and atoms” seem to have invaded my brain in just the same way.

Sometimes when I think about my family I see our south Dublin semi-d instead. When the house is clean and ordered, I think that means my family is well.

There are some shards of truth in this. A clean, bright house is likely to be a disease-free house and I’ve evolved from generations of mammies who knew that cleanliness would maximise their children’s chances of survival. Safety within four strong walls and a roof means my children are sheltered.

But there are plenty of lovely houses sheltering miserable families. I know my attachment to my house is ridiculous. I also know that my attachment to my house is a destructive force in this society.

A report by the National Economic and Social Forum in 2014 described a housing market such as ours, which is dominated by owner-occupiers, as “inequality enhancing”. Most of the half-million people who live in rented accommodation have few rights, little choice and reduced access to credit. They will often pass these disadvantages onto the next generation because they will not inherit property.

NESC lists off the “inequality enhancing” effects of having “no viable alternative to owner- occupation”. They include the fact that our system contains a “built-in bias” towards two-income families, which is unfair both to single people and. I would add, to families which need to devote time to caring.

The rental home is the gift that keeps on giving to the landlord, who will have fewer and fewer costs as the value of the property goes up and borrowing costs go down or disappear. The tenant’s rent will continue to rise with the market.

This is what is happening now at an alarming rate. Rents in Dublin and Cork are up by around 40% since 2010 and Daft’s latest rental report, due next month, will likely show still further increases.

My friends are delighted. They rented out their house in Dublin and moved to a rural area so she could shift to working part-time. The recent increase in their rental income has made life easier for them. They are not heartless people. They are just a family using the instruments this society gives us to achieve happiness.

I don’t believe I’m heartless either. But when I clicked on the latest Daft report showing serious house price increases in our cities, I was glad South Dublin’s price rise wasn’t falling behind the others.

I know these house price increases are a disaster for the few young people who have still enough cash to consider buying a house. I know those young people may soon be my own children. But I also know the value of our house may help them on their way.

I already see it parcelled off and sent in four different directions as down-payments on their homes. That’s when I’m not seeing it buying me an apartment with a sea view and a lifestyle. I never want to see it subsidising me for a decade in a nursing home but I suppose it would be better than ending up on the side of the road.

What I’m trying to say is that from the time I got my foot “on the property ladder” I have been stuck on it. There is no easy way of getting off it unless I join a contemplative order. Without wanting to, I have become a “have” whose having adds to the difficulties of the “have-nots”.

And the political class is aiding and abetting the process. Fine Gael is fundamentally the party of the property owner. While in Government with Labour, they ditched their Programme for Government commitment to a Site Value Tax, which would have made property owners such as me pay for the amazing public amenities to which I have access, and made vacant sites unviable. My property tax is a fifth the size of the average tax in a comparable country.

Fianna Fáil, which started life as the great champion of social housing, now looks after its largely property-owning voters.

It is spelled out clearly in the Daft report released this week that the relaxation of Central Bank mortgage lending rules and the First Time Buyers’ Grant have helped drive the sudden inflation in prices up 4% nationally in the first three months of this year and a whopping 8.7% in Dublin.

Economist Ronan Lyons, the author of the Daft reports, says if this trend continues for the next couple of years Dublin will be back at Celtic Tiger price levels. Prices in the other four major cities will likely rise quickly too.

This will ease the headaches of many who are still in negative equity and those who lent to them. It will also send into a bubble an economy in which that most basic requirement, shelter, is our main tradable commodity.

There is only one path now for the politicians who call themselves Left Wing and that is to throw down a massive challenge to the owner-occupier dominance which excludes up to a third of the Irish population and will never deliver a sustainable housing sector.

Humans do not live forever. They don’t need to own homes, they just need to borrow them. But if they are to live healthy and happy lives, they need to know they can stay in their homes, that the rent will not go up and that they will not have to pay it when they are old and have no income.

We need a State agency which can borrow off our balance sheet and build environmentally A-rated rental homes. These rents would be controlled but be more reflective of the cost of building and maintaining than our particularly low social housing rents. Those unable to meet this cost should have State assistance. Tenants should have security of tenure but should not have the option of buying back from the State.

Currently Ireland is the worst in a sad club with Greece, Poland and Slovakia: countries with poor rent control and poor contract regulation. In countries such as Sweden and Germany, social housing attracts private investment and is used by a wide sector of the population.

We are a people who defeated landlords, took control of our own country and then became landlords to ourselves. We can’t call ourselves a Republic while make this injustice the bedrock of our society.

Changing our mindset won’t be easy. Since we exited our famine hovels, property ownership has nearly entered our genes. If you’re coming for my house I’ll chain myself to the railings.

The rental home is the gift that keeps on giving to the landlord