Sarah Harte: Government’s ‘tone-deaf’ housing message shows why young people are leaving
Certain topics ignite an attack of rabid columnist syndrome. On these occasions, your editor may have to tap you gently on the shoulder and say: "Rein it in, Bubba."
Such an occasion occurred over the weekend when the Department of Housing shared an online video produced by the youth organisation Spunout offering young adults tips on moving back home.
In the tone-deaf video, since deleted from the department's social media channels, two young adults in a lovely period-looking room offer advice on how to make it work in your parents' gaff when you have more chance of winning the Nobel Peace Prize than finding or affording somewhere to rent.
One cracking suggestion is that you offer to do "chores" as it will make you feel more independent. I understand it’s Christmas, but has somebody been at the sherry (or something stronger) in the department?
No wonder young people are leaving in droves and don’t see a future here if that's the action on housing from the elected grown-ups in the room.
Also on Saturday, the reported the Department of Higher Education wants to allow private accommodation providers to increase student rents more often to attract developers into the sector.
The rationale here, on the face of it, smells like rewarding developers and further penalising students and their families. I recently met a couple who work a seven-day week, juggling three jobs to afford college accommodation, with the kids chipping in, too, because they are determined their children will get educated.
Higher education minister James Lawless said he was balancing viability against affordability. Well, it reads like some form of reverse social engineering — effectively, college is for rich kids.
Incidentally, the Department of Housing does not endorse the Department of Higher Education’s line of argument. This confirmed there is no joined-up thinking on housing.
To add salt to the wound, there was an item on the radio on Saturday about students travelling long distances to college (nothing new there) but now skipping lectures due to working longer hours at part-time jobs and, in some cases, skipping meals to try to make ends meet.
So, are young people leaving in their droves? A recent National Youth Council of Ireland Red C poll suggested three in five people under 25 were considering emigration due to the accommodation crisis.
CSO figures indicate tens of thousands of young people have emigrated, with one in eight 25-year-old respondents contacted to take part in a CSO Growing Up in Ireland survey having flown the coop.
Maybe they didn’t take the tips in the video and do enough chores, so things got sticky with the olds. One wag wrote on Reddit, “How to raise the topic of euthanasia with your parents so you can inherit their home. Brought to you by the Government of Ireland.” You know what, it’s not far off.
You could try to be positive about intergenerational living, which is where the Department of Housing may have been coming from before they failed to consider how this highly insensitive video might be viewed, coming from the very people who are supposed to be fixing this crisis.
And if this is all you’ve got, then we may as well hit the sherry, too, and send our adult children to the shops for supplies as part of their chores.
In theory, we could say (the Department of Housing can’t and shouldn’t) that families living together in a variety of configurations, with interdependent economic and emotional support, theoretically suggest a more interesting use of housing space.
But two major qualifiers. First, it comes down to having space for the younger gang and being located somewhere where they can try to make a life. Not everyone has a period house in an urban conurbation.
Secondly, it is not a solution to ask young people to pause hitting milestones they might reasonably expect to reach when there is literally no Plan B except to hang on in the attic or leave.
This video, as Labour’s housing spokesperson Conor Sheehan said, is a “very blatant admission of failure” by the Government in terms of its housing policy. It shows it is out of touch and desensitised to the life-altering, emotionally charged consequences of a complete lack of affordable housing.
You can dress it up anyway you like, but Christmas is an emotional time for many. There will be a lot of empty spaces at the kitchen table this Christmas.
Last week, I received a photograph on WhatsApp of a gang of young men in their late 20s. The majority are leaving, which is why they spent one last weekend together. Over half of that school year is now in Australia. In good Irish Mammy style, I demanded a picture. When it arrived, I found the photo depressing, and no, it’s not just maternal self-indulgence.
What struck me about this photo is that these young men knocking on the door of their 30s are not taking a gap year. They are leaving as part of a skilled migration exodus. Some of them are professionals, so we, the parents and taxpayers, have seen them through a long educational process. This is human capital leaving our shores.
They are not economic refugees in the strict sense. In a country of full employment, they all had jobs. They are housing refugees, taking their energy, education and talent with them because they figure they can do better elsewhere.
As one of them said to me, there are "shitboxes" you can rent, but for a vast fortune. It doesn’t make economic sense to them. It’s not doable, and they feel locked out.
Figures released by Daft earlier this year suggest rents have climbed faster than at any point in the past 20 years, with a national monthly average exceeding €2,000.
Housing is not just a logistical problem. So many things flow from whether you have a roof over your head. So many dreams and aspirations can be thwarted by the lack of bricks and mortar. So many consequences flow from the psychodrama of the Irish housing crisis.
If some mothers are thrilled that their adult children are in Australia, I haven’t met them. Many mothers I know quietly say, Please God, he won’t meet an Australian girl and settle down there because they are at the age now of getting engaged and so forth.
I am reminded of the quote from the writer Michael Ondaatje: "Do you understand the sadness of geography?"
We can agree our children leave Ireland with education, unlike their antecedents, who typically left with nothing because we strategically recognised education was our future, and we can be proud of that.
But you don’t have to be an economist to work out that the housing shambles (insert word, crisis, catastrophe as you wish) is eroding the educational system’s advantages.
And what does it mean for our collective future? Watching the output from the Departments of Housing and Higher Education at the weekend, I had an image of Government wonks in their silos, wildly throwing darts at a board to see if one sticks. Worst of all, we know it won’t.
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