Sir, – Rory Hearne's brilliant appraisal of the housing market states that a fundamental change in our values and policy approach to housing is needed to give hope to young people and the homeless ("Housing solutions as critical to our lives as health and education", Opinion & Analysis, April 21st).
Why the 2016 Rebuilding Ireland programme failed was that by only stimulating the private housing market, perpetuating the decades-old policy of prioritising the property developer and investor to provide affordable houses, this resulted in inflated property prices.
To transform the housing market and prevent another housing crash, he calls for a tripling of the present €3 billion investment to enable local authorities, housing associations and cooperatives to build 20,000 sustainable public houses a year.
He justifiably states that the Land Development Agency is repeating the mistakes of Nama with market orientation and undermining the role of local authorities.
New thinking is needed if the Government is truly serious about ending homelessness. It must invest directly in the social homes this country and our society desperately need and not indirectly via investors. – Yours, etc,
MICHAEL MULVIHILL,
Castleknock,
Dublin 15.
Sir, – Rory Ahearne argues that the numbers on our social housing waiting lists have been falsely reduced and should really stand at 120,000 rather than 61,880 because those housed under the housing assistance payment (HAP) scheme are not included on the list. This is nonsense.
Those housed under this scheme are removed from social housing waiting lists for the very logical reason that they are no longer in need of housing. They are housed.
His argument is analogous to making the case for everyone to be on medical waiting lists on the basis that there is a possibility that they may become ill in the future.
While I agree totally with his argument that protections for those leasing in the private rental sector must be brought up to those existing in most European countries, such as long leases and much improved security of tenure, he undermines his whole case by his refusal to even acknowledge that HAP has resulted in over 58,000 families being housed. – Yours, etc,
MICK FAGAN,
Tallaght,
Dublin 24.