Letters to the editor: How much longer can the housing crisis go on?

'The policy that relies on the private sector to provide social and affordable homes is a disaster.' Picture: Denis Minihane

If anyone was still in any doubts that Government housing policy has failed, surely the harrowing report on the conditions a mother and her children were forced to live in before an offer of emergency accommodation last week must finally dispel them ( ‘Pregnant single mother’s rented flat has sewage leaking into kitchen and bathroom’, Irish Examiner, March 16). The policy that relies on the private sector to provide social and affordable homes is a disaster. Not only is it at the core of the current crisis, it prevents effective corrective actions to be taken by entities whose only objective is to provide housing. The current policy turns homes into commodities to be exploited rather than seeing them as vital social goods. How long is it going to take — and how many lives destroyed — before there is an end to the theorising and dreaming up of variations of the same failed policy before we all get real about this crucial matter?

Government must take ownership of the crisis and initiate a planned social and affordable housing build programme, based on projected need, under the direct oversight of a minister. That is the only solution to tackling the present shortage of social and affordable homes. And it carries the additional bonus of protecting future generations from ever having to live in the shameful conditions you report on and be free of the fear of falling into homelessness.