Darragh O’Brien has been Minister for Housing for two years. His housing plan was released a year ago this week.
In the 12 months since our housing crisis has gone from bad to worse. A growing number of people are unable to access secure and affordable homes.
Last Friday the Department of Housing released the July homeless figures. At the end of that month 10,568 people including 3,137 children were in emergency accommodation.
Unfortunately, this is not the full picture. There are several hundred men and women in hostels not funded by the state including the Morning Star and Regina Coeli.
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Figures from the Department of Children indicate that there are more than 500 women and children in Tusla-funded domestic violence refuges.
The Department of Children has also confirmed that more than 3,000 adults and children have been granted asylum but are unable to leave direct provision due to the housing crisis.
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The true number of adults and children who tonight will sleep in some form of emergency accommodation is more than 14,000.
In April 2021 Mr O’Brien ended the emergency Covid-19 ban on evictions. Since then, Department of Housing reports show homelessness has increased by 30 per cent and child homelessness has increased by a shocking 43 per cent.
The primary cause of rising homelessness is Governments’ failure to deliver an adequate supply of social and affordable homes.
Data from the Department of Housing website shows that in 2021 Government missed its social housing target by 25 per cent delivering just 5,070 of the promised 7,736 homes.
The Department of Housing imposes unnecessary bureaucracy on public housing delivery that can delay projects, in some cases by up to two years
The most recent figures for this year provided in answers to Parliamentary Questions show just 639 real social homes were delivered by the end of the first quarter. That is just 7 per cent of the 9,100 social homes promised by the Government.
Parliamentary answers also confirm that last year not a single affordable home to purchase was delivered. The target for affordable cost rental in 2021 was just 440 homes, but only 65 were delivered.
By June this year figures from the Department show 38 affordable purchase homes and 119 cost rental homes had been delivered. This is just 7 per cent and 17 per cent of the Government’s targets.
Covid-19 undoubtedly had an impact on house building. However, many social housing building sites were able to remain open in 2021. Meanwhile, private sector output has rebounded. Yet social housing output continues to lag.
Why? Because the Department of Housing imposes unnecessary bureaucracy on public housing delivery that can delay projects, in some cases by up to two years.
In previous years when social and affordable housing failed to meet demand Government relied on the private rental sector to pick up the slack.
That option is no longer available. With house prices now above their Celtic Tiger peak, accidental and pension pot landlords are selling up.
Figures released to me by the Residential Tenancies Board show Notices to Quit up 100 per cent in the last 12 months, with 60 per cent due to sale of property.
The latest Daft.ie reports show rents increased by 15 per cent and house prices by 20 per cent since the current Government was formed. No wonder the number of 24- to 35-year-olds living at home has increased to 41 per cent.
Successive Governments’ over-reliance on the private sector to meet social and affordable housing demand, has come back to bite them with a vengeance.
Despite his claims, Mr O’Brien refuses to scale up public housing delivery to meet social and affordable need.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. Budget 2023 provides the opportunity to start making the necessary changes to undo the damage of thirty years of bad housing policy.
A Sinn Féin Government would increase investment in the delivery of at least 20,000 social and affordable homes every year.
These would include direct delivery of new homes by local authorities and approved housing bodies, continued use of turnkeys for social and affordable housing and greater reuse of vacant and derelict stock.
There are active planning permissions for more than 90,000 new homes; there are 20,000 social and affordable homes stuck in Departmental red tape; there are tens of thousands of vacant and derelict properties.
There is also a need to take urgent action to protect renters from rising rents, including a three-year ban on rent increases for all existing and new tenancies
With enough political will, the right levels of investment and determination, meeting this ambitious target is possible.
A Sinn Féin government would also take emergency action to stop the rise in homelessness.
A temporary ban on evictions into homelessness is urgently required. This should be accompanied by an expansion of the tenant-in-situ scheme where Councils purchase rental properties with HAP, RAS or Rent Supplement tenants with notices to quit.
There is also a need to take urgent action to protect renters from rising rents, including a three-year ban on rent increases for all existing and new tenancies and a refundable tax credit to put a month’s rent back into every private renter’s pocket.
A Sinn Féin government would also set a date for a referendum to enshrine the right to housing in the Constitution.
While such a right would not, on its own, solve the housing crisis, it would create a legal obligation on Government to progressively realise the right to secure, appropriate and affordable homes for all.
The Government’s housing plan is not working. How could it? It was designed by the political parties and vested interests that caused the housing crisis.
We need a paradigm shift in housing policy. A policy that delivers large volumes of high-quality, affordable and sustainable homes. Only a change of government will deliver such a plan.
Eoin Ó Broin TD is Sinn Féin’s housing spokesman