Housing crisis needs tobe tackled urgently
This is deeply ironic given the manic developer-led house-building of the Celtic Tiger years, the subsequent collapse of the buyers’ market, leaving thousands of empty finished and unfinished houses throughout the country, and the fetish encouraged in Irish society around the issue of having your own home.
There were 56,000 people on the waiting list for local authority housing in 2008; there are now believed to be about 100,000 waiting now. Lists have gone up by an average of 42%. Among the longest housing lists per head of population are those for Dublin city and Cork city.
Many thousands of social housing units a year would have to be built to meet demand. Yet construction workers queue up in the dole office, emigrate to Australia or are driven to work for Irish Water installing unwanted meters. The Government’s solution consists of the recent housing bill, supported strongly by the Labour Party. Under this legislation, the State will encourage people on the housing list to continue to rent privately while it provides a Housing Assistance Payment, known as HAP.
TD Richard Boyd Barrett has said that the new HAP scheme would result in tens of thousands of families being struck off council lists, while their housing needs would be deemed to be met as long as they continue to rent.
Our society is in crisis when it cannot house people in need; not simply “problematic” people such as rough sleepers, but families. Huge numbers of unemployed building workers on the one hand, huge social need on the other, yet no way, under the thinking of the establishment parties, of putting these elements together.
Our elected representatives need to actively legislate to ensure that people in need of homes get the available housing and our skilled workforce is utilised to ready more units for occupation.
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