After housing and homelessness emergencies are sorted we can lurch on to the next crisis

The government ignore everything except the latest crisis and then reach for a quick-fix solution, writes Michael Clifford

THAT’S that crisis sorted so. Now that the housing and homeless emergency has been deal with, we can all pack up and move on to the next crisis. Maybe the depths of winter will throw up something in health, which can generate screaming headlines, tortured debate, political manoeuvring and finally a solution. Crisis, what crisis? Once more some figures within Government will don their superhero capes and come to the rescue.

The housing package announced last week will have taken some of the heat out of what is a genuine humanitarian crisis. Up to 70 families were becoming homeless every month, mainly but not exclusively in the Dublin area. Nearly all of these cases arose because of inability to pay rents in the private rental sector.

Among other outcomes, this meant that children were growing up in hotel rooms, with all the developmental and nutritional repercussions from that.

Tuesday’s announcement by Michael Noonan and Alan Kelly should at least arrest ballooning rents. This in the immediate term means that families can stay in their homes. A number of long-term measures were also announced, but therein lie the type of problems that typify the political culture in this country.

That culture involves ignoring everything except the latest crisis and then reaching for the nearest quick-fix solution.

What has happened in housing is just the latest example. Three years ago much of what has unfolded was foretold. In 2012, Focus Ireland, among others, warned that the mortgage arrears problems and rising rents was pushing families out of their rental accommodation.

At that time, eight families were becoming homeless each month. Focus Ireland’s Sr Stanislaus Kennedy recently outlined how the homeless charity could see what was going to unfold.

“In 2012, Focus Ireland informed the Government that families were at a tipping point with eight families becoming homeless every month. And in 2013 that number had risen to 20 every month. Last year 40 families were becoming homeless and now 70 families a month are,” she told the Irish Catholic newspaper.

What if due attention had been paid to what Focus Ireland was saying three years ago? A plan could have been formulated to initiate a major project in building social housing. Hundreds, if not thousands of houses would now be ready for occupation. Some heat could have been released from the rental market. Far fewer children would be growing up in the confines of hotel rooms.

Such action would have gone against the grain. No crisis had yet made itself known. There was no media flurry, no procession of testimony on Liveline, no crowding of constituency offices by a large cohort of people in desperate straits. Without a crisis, there was no action.

So once again, the crisis materialised and there was a rush — give or take time out for political manoeuvring between Kelly and Noonan — to do something, anything. Preferably something with a big bang that could be fashioned as a panacea.

The problem with the “do something... anything” approach in this instance is that there are huge dangers of negative consequences for decisions taken.

Property owners claim that the rent controls which only allow for one hike over two years will be deter investors. There is no real evidence to support that contention, and in any case, the humanitarian crisis demands immediate action around rents.

The longer-term solutions are a different matter. Here the approach taken is to sweeten planning laws in order to make it worthwhile for developers to actually build homes.

This includes: Revising the minimum size of housing units in order to accommodate some studio apartments; lowering the number of car parking spaces per development; and easing restrictions that insisted a minimum number of apartments in a development were “dual aspect”, which means including windows on more than one side of an apartment.

These changes, we are told, could reduce the cost of building apartments by up to €20,000 a unit. But at what cost?

All the indications are that the main cities, and Dublin and Cork in particular, are going to be the engines for future economic activity in the coming years. Both cities were about the only two locations to experience a drop in population during the building bubble years. This was accounted for by urban sprawl that saw huge numbers move out of the cities.

All the planning advice is now that this trend will have to be reversed. City living is the way to go for those who find themselves drawn to jobs in the major conurbations. And yet, the newest guidelines are more likely to drive people out that attract them into the cities. Changing car parking restrictions is no big deal. But the other measures will do little to fashion sustainable communities in cities.

Most students don’t give a toss about dual aspect. The same might be said for young adults finding their way through the shallows of a career. Dual aspect is a big deal for those advancing towards middle age. Who wants to raise kids in an apartment that does not maximise on the light of the day? Who wants to stay long-term in such quarters? The same applies to the new proposed smaller studio apartment. It’s all very good over the short term, but what will it mean for attempting to reshape city living in order to build sustainable communities?

None of that will be of any real interest to politicians who simply can’t see beyond the next election. By the time these issues develop into problems, Noonan and Kelly will have exited the stage and their successors will decry that way that things were done in the past, but trumpet themselves as the new sheriff in town. Until the next crisis.

If the Government was really interested in making it cheaper to build, it might well look at one of the main costs involved — the price of development land. Rezoning land as residential is supposed to be a policy based on the common good, yet the main beneficiary is the landowner who sees his muck turned into gold overnight, with the asset’s value increasing by a multiple. Why not do something sensible like that proposed by the Kenny Report over 40 years ago? Why not determine that rezoned land must sell at the agricultural price plus 25%?

That would certainly bring down the cost of building houses. Except it would also enrage a vested interest for whom Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil have always bent over backwards to accommodate. Even in a crisis, it would appear, there are certain groups which must not be forced to put shoulder to the wheel. You can mess up the future all you want, but don’t discommode landowners or developers who may have influence over your short-term political future.