As housing and homelessness crisis deepens “government is stoking up property speculation and profiteering
Responding to the latest published figures showing 90,000 families currently on Council housing lists Richard Boyd Barrett TD, for the People Before Profit Alliance has described “the chronic housing crisis” as a “social disaster” and has said the crisis is a “direct consequence of an abysmal failure in government housing policy.”
He said: “Council housing waiting lists in Dublin that a decade ago, were six to seven years long, are now twelve to thirteen years long – leaving tens of thousands of families, households and individuals in insecure, often temporary and quite often appalling housing conditions – prey to arbitrary rent rises, notices to quit and adds saying “rent allowance not accepted.” This is particularly cruel on children. For many vulnerable or mentally ill people, the system is simply unmanageable and leads to the streets.”
Deputy Boyd Barrett condemned particularly the decision of the government to abandon the direct provision of council housing in favour of leasing arrangements with private landlords and reliance on the voluntary sector – a policy set out in a document published by the Department of the Environment June 16th 2011. (See attached)
This policy move was combined with reductions in rent allowance caps in 2012 by Minister Joan Burton, which the government claimed would put downward pressure on private rents, whereas Deputy Boyd Barrett at the time warned that it would result in greater levels of homelessness. Rents in South County Dublin have gone up by 14% and Threshold estimate less than 2% of properties fall within the rent caps.
“The subsequent dramatic increase in homelessness and rise in rents, in Dublin in particular, has confirmed the disastrous policy error of the government when it comes to dealing with the housing crisis” said Deputy Boyd Barrett.
Deputy Boyd Barrett also accused the government of trying “to cover-up it’s now clearly apparent policy failure by manipulating the housing list figures and disingenuous public statements about its plans to deliver social housing.”
He said: “The government are trying to artificially reduce the council lists by categorising tenants in long-term leasing arrangements as being housed and off the list, when in reality they are simply tenants of private landlords who can evict them whenever they like.”
“The government are also deceiving the public and the media with claims that they will deliver 5000 new social homes next year, when in reality, the vast majority of these will be sourced from private landlords, will be totally insecure, and will cost the state a fortune. It is also unlikely the state will even be able to source this number of houses as the landlords and developers now have increasing control of the market and can get whatever rents they like on the open market.”
Basically, the policy has been catastrophic failure that has facilitated the speculators and landlords and plunged us into the greatest housing crisis in the recent history of the state.
Deputy Boyd Barrett warned that “the full scale of the bankruptcy of the government’s policy is apparent with its decision to put in place new property based tax reliefs to encourage property speculation,” – something he said was “now threatening to re-start the sort of property speculation that had crashed the economy in 2007.”
He added: “It simply beggars belief that after suffering an unprecedented economic crash as a result of private speculation and profiteering in property, we have a government who is now handing over responsibility for social housing to those same speculators and developers.
The inclusion of new reliefs in capital gains tax for purchases of commercial property and investors in Real Estate Investment Trusts (REIT’s) in recent budgets is utterly incredible. The government are facilitating a corporate take-over of the housing market and this is resulting directly in rising rents and a growing housing and homelessness crisis.”
Deputy Boyd Barrett concluded: “We need to immediate back away from this utterly failed and disastrous policy. The state must build council houses in large numbers. This must be done to house people who desperately need homes, but also to save the state money and to prevent a new casino in commercial property arising. A major council housing programme could be self-financing over a five to ten year period because of the reduction in rent allowance payments to private landlords and the return of increased rental revenue to the state. A major council housing programme would also generate badly needed construction jobs and so reduce the social welfare bill. This could be a win, win, win policy if the government have the wit to break from their utterly crazy current policy.”