A protest took place at Dáil Éireann today to demand immediate action on the rapidly worsening social housing and homelessness crisis.
The protest has been called by People Before Profit TD, Richard Boyd Barrett and People Before Profit candidate for Europe Cllr. Brid Smith, who have repeatedly raised the issue of housing in the Dáil and Dublin City Council respectively over the last three years and who believe current government housing policy is directly generating a housing and homelessness emergency.
Deputy Boyd Barrett will also be raising the issue of the rent allowance cap with Minister for Social Protection Joan Burton in the Dáil tomorrow morning and will be introducing a bill later this week that would make it illegal for landlords to discriminate against prospective tenants on the grounds that they are in receipt of rent allowance.
Deputy Boyd Barrett and Cllr Smith felt forced to call this protest as their offices in Dun Laoghaire and Ballyfermot are now completely over-run with people facing homelessness or dire housing problems and the situation is worsening on a weekly basis.
Richard Boyd Barrett said the worsening housing crisis flows directly from government policy and appears to be part of a deliberate strategy to pump up property prices to benefit corporate speculators in the property sector and to restore the asset balance sheet of the banks. The policy of REITS (Real Estate Investment Funds), for example, is yet again incentivising speculation in the property market, allowing companies to buy property at bargain basement prices.
Linked to this is the shortage of rental accommodation and social housing which is driving up rents and combined with the utterly unrealistic rent allowance cap makes renting for anybody in receipt of social welfare virtually impossible.
Deputy Boyd Barrett said all these elements and an utterly failed housing policy are leading directly to a homelessness and housing emergency. He said the government must immediately abandon its current policy, launch an emergency social housing building programme and increase the rent allowance caps to match with current market rents.
Speakers at the protest today included Peter McDonagh who has been living with mental health problems in homeless accommodation for three years and Charlene Murray, a mother of five children under the age of 12, some of whom attend school in Shankill but have been placed in a hotel in City-west.
A number of other people currently living in homeless accommodation or threatened with homelessness because of the rent allowance caps and the lack of social housing also attended.
Richard Boyd Barrett TD said, “The situation is absolutely catastrophic. Every week dozens and dozens of families including the young, the elderly and the disabled and those with young children are being faced with homelessness as a direct result of the government’s housing policy failure. My clinic is utterly over-run with terrified and distraught people who simply do not know what to do.
For many all the council can offer them is emergency accommodation often in hostels where families are mixed in with people with chronic alcohol and drug problems or in hotels on the other side of the city.
All of this suffering because of the government’s crazy rent cap policy, their refusal to build council houses and their insistence on pampering landlords, property speculators and banks. This has to stop”.
Cllr Brid Smith, People Before Profit Candidate for Europe said, “The government are celebrating three years in power and a myriad of what they call their “achievements” yet not a mention of housing. One of the biggest failings of this government is their complete inability to house those in need. In the last decade we’ve gone from housing boom to housing crisis and we see new policies to encourage speculation yet again. There are over a quarter of a million empty housing units across the country which could be used as a starting point for housing the 100,000 on the waiting lists.
In Dublin alone there are 31,000 families on the housing list. We urgently need an emergency house building programme for these men, women and children. This programme would not only provide much needed housing but would also create jobs in construction”.