The horror of homelessness - Housing crisis

THE revelation that over €25m was spent last year housing homeless families in emergency accommodation in Dublin is an indictment of the housing policies adopted by successive governments since the early 1990s.

When Ireland was a very poor country in the 1950s we managed to build tens of thousands of local authority homes for people who did not have the wherewithal to do it themselves.

Likewise during recessionary times in the 1980s.

Even when the cupboard was bare, we did not have the unedifying sight of whole families forced to live in emergency accommodation.

Ireland’s housing problem is predominantly an urban one. Since the 1990s the solution has been to allow for-profit builders to solve it on the government’s behalf. The results have been dismal, with barely a handful of social housing completed each year under this laissez-faire arrangement that hands control to builders and developers.

The argument against a return to building by local authorities is that results would take too long, but that is nonsense.

In the first instance, many urban councils have vacant plots of land that they could build on. Secondly, modern building techniques are such that very good and comfortable homes can be completed in months or even weeks.

All it takes is the political will to make this happen. Let us hope the next government will have the gumption to do that.