A defining moment for all of us - Housing crisis

EVERY advertisement offering a chance to invest in — bet if you’re of a more sceptical disposition — a financial product now carries the caveat “investments may go down as well as up ...”

However, because of our bizarre, overly emotional and socially unsustainable relationship with bricks and mortar, and land too, those who invest in property hope their “investment” is a one-way bet. They hope their punt is too big to fail even if the chastening, wealth-destroying evidence to the contrary is all around us.

Yet, that expectation seems to be at the root of the philosophical opposition to any form of rent control even though economies, and some might argue societies too, far more efficient and equitable than ours — Germany and Holland particularly — have had rent control for generations. It is at the root too of the spat between Environment Minister Alan Kelly, who wants some form of rent control, and Finance Minister Michael Noonan who has, apparently, blocked proposals on the issue. One view seems to protect people’s rights and needs, the other champions property rights and come-what-may investment expectations. The great challenge is to make those opposing positions fit and work together. Rent control seems a reasonable way to achieve that.

The real tragedy is that we seem to be happy to pretend our system is working when it is so very obvious it is broken beyond repair. We have an unprecedented and shameful housing crisis putting huge strain on families, individuals, communities and social services. We have a housing crisis that imposes huge burdens on those renting property for prices so out of kilter that many will never have an opportunity to do what most of us regard as a rite of passage if not a human right — buy their own home.

We have this crisis because government after government, this one too, reneged on their long-established obligations around social housing. We, to use possibly the most discredited and abhorrent phrase of our time, left what is a grave social responsibility “to the market”.

The consequences of the misplaced trust, that almost unforgiveable innocence, is that rents in Dublin have risen by 35% since 2011 and by 10% in the last year. One-in-five of us live in rented homes, even more in urban areas. This ratio doubled in the five years between 2006 and 2011. These soaring rents are made possible by the single incontrovertible fact, a metric of grave social failure, that house completions collapsed from 93,419 in 2006 to around 8,000 today. There are myriad reasons for this but none are strong enough to make today’s crisis any more palatable or tolerable.

The cabinet sub-committee on housing met yesterday. Taoiseach Enda Kenny, Tánaiste Joan Burton, and Mr Noonan were expected to attend. Proposals are anticipated for next week’s cabinet meeting. Whether those proposals will be influenced by Mr Kelly’s arguments, which have been supported by the National Economic and Social Council, or not, remains to be seen but an immediate, convincing response is overdue. This is one of the defining issues and moments for this Government and this society too.