The various crises in housing in Ireland has been a constant focus of the media since the start of the crash.
First, it was plunging house prices, developers going bust, construction workers losing their jobs, and the collapsing of PPPs.
Then it was NAMA, vacancy, unfinished estates, pyrite-infected homes, Priory Hall and other poorly built estates, negative equity, and mortgage arrears.
Now it is rising rents, rising prices in Dublin, a shortage of homes in some locations, social housing waiting lists, rising homelessness, and probably from this summer on increasing numbers of repossessions.
Since 2007, all elements of housing, in all parts of the country, have been in crisis. For seven years we have effectively had no housing policy, no housing reforms, and no strong, proactive management designed to address the various problems. Rather, the government’s strategy under both the last regime and the present has been to tinker round the edges — site resolution plans, social and housing leasing initiative, a pyrite committee, minor reform to the Planning and Development Act, etc. None of it in a coordinated, holistic way.
With the exception of putting millions into NAMA to look after the banker and developer interests in an effort to try and salvage something from the disastrous bank guarantee , these are all low cost, minimal effort tactics to give the impression of doing something, but actually toothless and spineless and making very little difference on the ground. They were shamed into sorting of the mess relating to Priory Hall residents.
There has been no substantive investment in tackling various issues such as the 89,872 on the social housing waiting list, or the 96,474 in 90+ days in mortgage arrears, or rising homelessness. Investing in housing has not even to date been seen as a means of tackling two birds with one stone — creating jobs/investment in business and addressing various housing crises. Instead there has been massive disinvestment. For example, since 2008, the capital expenditure for social housing has been reduced by 80% (from €1.3bn to €275m) while there has been a 90% decrease in housing output from local authorities between 2007 and 2011.
The strategy in effect has been to try and muddle through to such times as the private sector and the market return to sort things out. At which point any state investment will be targeted at reviving market interests, with social housing continuing to be supplied through private development and rental supplement. In 2010, 97,260 families received rent supplement allowance to enable them to live in private rental stock due to a lack of social housing at a cost to the state of over €500 million per annum. In whose interest is such a policy? It is difficult to argue, unless you are a vested private interest, that it is the state’s or taxpayers’.
We will continue to have housing problems for a good number of years, especially in the absence of any holistic strategy and set of policies designed to try and coordinate and regulate development and how all aspects of the housing sector functions. That strategy needs to see good, affordable housing as a right; to see housing as homes rather than simply assets and investment vehicles. And it needs to get value for money for the state in terms of private services rendered.
That’s not to deny market interests’ profit, but that this profit is reasonable without being exploitative and does not rip-off both tenants and the state. Much of continental Europe manages to do this. Ireland, however, has swallowed the neoliberal mantra hook, line and sinker, and seven years of crisis has not led to any kind of re-think or change in vision or policy.
As the market returns and house and rental prices rise, in the absence of checks-and-balances such as rental control and adequate supply, affordability and the need for social housing and homelessness will increasingly become an issue, especially if local authorities remain emancipated of resources.
House prices turning and rents rising does not mean that that various problems of housing in Ireland are soon to be solved. They signal the arrival of the next wave of issues. Expect on-going housing crises for the foreseeable future.
Rob Kitchin
Ireland after NAMA 
April 28, 2014 at 9:20 am
Excellent article. In Galway City the council are to build just 15 houses this year I think. The issue of who should build the houses needed to accommodate people on a waiting list is a government responsibility in my view! In the post-war situation, the UK government began a programme of house building in south eastern England, which included building new towns, or, Garden-Cities like Welwyn Garden City – Harlow New Town etc.
I was brought up living in an LCC (London County Council) house, constructed in 1950’s post war estate just outside of urbanised London at Debden, Essex. Our estate, of about 1,500 houses included construction of schools, shopping precincts, industrial/business estates and sports fields. All this within walking distance of the London Undgerground stations at Debden and Loughton (the village), and all this just 11 miles from Charing Crosss. We were also connected to London via London Transport busses. Houses, schools, shops, factories and all transport services were all constructed simultaneously so that people were not left waiting for such. All these developments were constructed by private sector building companies for the local authority, with funding provided by central government.
Irelands attempts at urban house construction west of Dublin, have been nothing short of a disgrace. With no real planning beforehand that would ensure people living in these new housing prairies had any services, or, indeed connection with the local community and with Dublin itself for years after they were herded in. Meanwhile, housing was allowed be built almost everywhere else, especially in the west of Ireland that had no connection with the local town or village services (once-off houses). It is time for national government to look at developing several strategic new-towns like the British did after WW2. After all, this a national housing emergency.