Could Nama's resources be used to ease homelessness crisis?

The agency has no responsibility for housing policy and nor should it, but Nama can be used to respond to the housing crisis using it’s resources of houses, land and money, writes Dr Michael Byrne

NAMA seems in many ways like the proverbial Irish solution to an Irish problem. In reality, it’s largely based on a US ‘bad bank’ established in 1989: The Resolution Trust Corporation. The RTC was set up following a financial and real estate crash not unlike our own and is serves as a kind of blueprint for Nama.

One aspect of the RTC is, however, notably absent. One of its three core objectives was ‘to maintain and expand affordable housing’. Over the course of its lifetime, it delivered in the region of 100,000 affordable using units, working with community organisations and housing associations.