Housing policies a disaster for thousands

AS reported on July 25, Cork County Council is to introduce a streamlined points system in the hope of speeding up allocations for the affordable housing scheme.

This is good news, particularly for applicants who have been waiting three years or more for an allocation.

Ireland has a serious housing crisis. Entire communities will be forced to leave their homes unless the Government invests significantly in social and affordable housing. We either invest in this or face a future in which the polarisation of society becomes even more extreme.

The zigzag policies of successive governments with regard to the private rented sector, and the manner in which so-called investors — speculators, in reality — are treated, are mind boggling. One year disincentives are put in the way for speculators, the next they are removed and new incentives put back.

The result of this mishmash has been a disaster many thousands of ordinary working people and young people throughout the country who are waiting for affordable and social housing.

I refer, in particular, to those at the mercy of private landlords — the very speculators who priced the ordinary working people and young people out of the market and now hold them to ransom for rents one would imagine should be sufficient to rent a mansion rather than a modest three bedroom semi-detached house or small apartment.

Last year, €400 million was spent on rent supplement payments to private landlords.

Why could this funding not be given to local authorities to build social and affordable housing and not to build up the bank accounts of millionaires?

I call on all community leaders to highlight the injustices of the housing system against working-class people.

Ireland can no longer claim to be a republic — it is an aristocracy with a shabby veneer of democracy.

Cllr Noel Collins

St Jude’s

Midleton

Co Cork