Dessie Ellis (Dublin North West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I move:

That Dáil Éireann:

accepts that there is an emergency social housing crisis resulting from years of underinvestment in social housing builds and acknowledges that the only way to fully address this crisis is to immediately commence a major social house building programme;

further accepts that, as a consequence of lack of investment, bad planning, property speculation and incompetent governance, combined with successive ideologically similar Governments that have incentivised the private sector to increasingly deliver social housing needs, there is an unprecedented homelessness crisis;

demands that the Government address its abject failure to deal with the housing and homelessness crisis which has resulted in almost 5,000 people State-wide living in emergency accommodation; an estimated 2,298 people living in emergency accommodation in Dublin, 1,275 of whom are children; and an estimated 80 plus families presenting to the Dublin Region Homeless Executive on a monthly basis;

notes that in the period succeeding the temporary provision of 260 extra beds last Christmas in response to the death of Jonathan Corrie on Molesworth Street, Dublin, the number of people sleeping rough on the streets has doubled;

commends charitable organisations, community groups and housing agencies for the work they are doing to assist people who are homeless or living in housing distress throughout the State;

acknowledges the findings of the Dublin Simon Community Annual Review 2014, that highlighted the unprecedented levels of homelessness and the growing numbers of people sleeping rough and in emergency accommodation in the capital;

commends Threshold’s Dublin Tenancy Protection Service in preventing 900 families from homelessness over the last year;

agrees that current Rent Supplement levels are wholly inadequate to meet people’s needs as illustrated by figures released recently by the Private Residential Tenancies Board, (PRTB) that reveal a significant increase across both the private rental housing and apartment markets in Ireland up to June, 2015, with average rent for private accommodation increasing 7.1 per cent in 12 months from the second quarter of 2014;

notes:— that since this government came to power the spend on Rent Supplement has reduced from €516,860,000 in 2010 to an estimated figure of €298,415,000 in 2015 and that the Mortgage Interest Supplement decreased during the same period from €77,246,000 to €11,930,000 and that this Government has made it easier for the banks to evict people in mortgage arrears, resulting in more homelessness and housing overcrowding;

— recent figures released by the PRTB that starkly show housing rents were 6.4 per cent higher in the second quarter of this year, while apartment rents increased by 7.6 per cent, meaning tenants leasing a house paid out an average of €878 per month in rent - €50 more than in the same period in 2014 - and for people renting an apartment, the national average rate was recorded at €922; and

— that in Dublin, rental rates continue to increase close to ‘boom’ time levels, with housing rents increasing by 8.8 per cent, while apartment rates went up by 9.4 per cent, meaning the typical rent for a house in Dublin in the second quarter of this year was €1,387 and €1,260 for an apartment, while the Rent Supplement threshold is €950 a month;recognises the key role approved housing bodies have in providing and managing social housing;

agrees that housing homeless families in hotels and bed and breakfasts is wholly unacceptable and unsustainable;

further agrees that modular housing as proposed by this Government as an emergency response measure is not the correct response to the crisis but does not oppose the provision of any shelter for homeless families on condition that modular housing is of high quality, is short-term, is well integrated and does not act as a replacement or financial impediment to a proper social housing build programme; and

calls on the Government to:— review Part VIII of the Planning and Development Act 2000, with the view to temporarily amending legislation in order to provide social housing in a more timely manner;

— significantly increase the direct funding to local authorities to commence a long-term plan of social housing expansion;

— provide the legislative framework for local authorities to be able to access Housing Finance Agency loans off balance sheet to further supplement a major expansion of social housing;

— reverse the prioritisation of State-subsidised private rented accommodation through schemes such as the Housing Assistance Payment (HAP) and the Rental Accommodation Scheme (RAS) and leasing, in favour of local authority and Housing Association direct build, or purchase social housing;

— implement immediately a number of measures to address the housing and homelessness crisis which Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government has conceded is now a ‘humanitarian crisis’;

— contact the European Union Commission and have the housing crisis declared a‘national emergency’, allowing the Government to speed up the public procurement process when building social housing and to fund the building of social housing off balance sheet;

— work in tandem with the PRTB to introduce emergency legislation to cap and reduce rents to reasonable rent levels and to index-link future rent rises;

— accept that with approximately 38,000 mortgage holders experiencing severe mortgage distress, there is a need to introduce emergency legislation to cap mortgage interest rates;

— strengthen the protection of the family home in the Land and Conveyancing Law Reform Act 2013;

— compel the National Asset Management Agency (NAMA) to engage in an emergency consultation with local authorities, and give local authorities the funding and power to have the first refusal on suitable NAMA properties or land banks;

— review all property-related tax reliefs that encourage speculation for profit;

— set up municipal trusts with local authorities to source off-balance sheet funding to build social housing;

— give local authorities first option on empty State lands and buildings to address social housing needs;

— adequately fund local authorities to allow for regeneration projects, new-build social housing, making voids ready for allocation within the agreed six week period, and to refurbish existing stock;

— acquire on a temporary basis empty buildings, including office space, unused retail units and other vacant properties that can be suitably converted quickly for accommodation use;

— increase requirements under Part V of the Planning and Development Act 2000 to 20 per cent social and affordable housing on all new developments;

— increase funding for local authorities to build extensions to address overcrowding and disability adaptation needs in existing housing stock;

— reintroduce the Financial Contribution Scheme for senior citizens with monies raised being retained for future social housing needs;

— accept that local authorities are severely hampered from addressing the homelessness issue due to a lack of State funding and commit to adequately fund local authorities to address the short-fall in funding required for homelessness;

— ring-fence and increase funding to refuges that house survivors of domestic violence;

— re-examine the feasibility of the rural resettlement scheme;

— provide adequate funding to approved housing bodies to ensure they play a full role in provision of social housing; and

— expand and extend Threshold’s Tenancy Protection Service to include Galway, Limerick, Wicklow, Meath and Kildare.

Ba mhaith liom an rún seo a d'ardaigh Sinn Féin a mholadh, rún a d'ardaigh an páirtí mar go bhfuil géarchéim ann i dtaca le tithíocht agus daoine gan dídean. Today, we face a housing and homelessness crisis of epic proportions described by the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, Deputy Alan Kelly, and other eminent people as "a humanitarian crisis". There are currently 130,000 applicants on housing waiting lists across the country and since the Government came to power in 2011, an average of 400 social housing units have been built annually, which goes nowhere near meeting the needs of these people. A total of 5,000 homeless people and 1,500 children live in emergency accommodation on a daily basis, with 80 new families a month reporting homeless. There are 130 individuals sleeping rough on the streets of Dublin every night.

Through this motion, we call on Dáil Éireann to recognise the scale of the crisis we, as a nation, are experiencing resulting from the policy of this Government and previous Governments. We call on the Dáil to accept that bad planning and bad governance, as well as the incentivisation of private sector delivery of social housing needs, has directly resulted in the horrendous situation in which tens of thousands of our people find themselves. The appalling deaths of Jonathan Corrie and, more recently, Alan Murphy, who both passed away in the cold near the gates of this House, is an indictment of our society and our Government. In response to the death of Mr. Corrie last year, 260 additional beds were provided, but as the numbers of people sleeping on our streets continue to increase, we can see that 260 beds were simply not enough. The number of those sleeping rough has doubled since Jonathan’s death. The Government has used hotels and bed and breakfasts as an immediate remedy to the crisis, but this has caused further hardship for families by effectively imprisoning them in this accommodation without facilities to cook or to live a normal life. Many of the families I have spoken to have been put up in hotels on the other side of the city removed from all family supports, friends and miles from where their children go to school.

The haemorrhage from rental supplement and the rental accommodation scheme, RAS, to homelessness needs to be stemmed by the introduction of indexed rent controls in conjunction with an increase in rent supplement. The Minister has repeatedly failed in his commitment to introduce any form of rent control and, once again, his latest utterings are of no comfort to any tenant renting in this country.Ireland has one of the highest rates of home ownership in Europe, but this is changing rapidly changing due to the lack of housing supply.There are 30 year olds in full-time work, with children of their own, being forced to move back in with their parents to avoid rent jail. As rents soar, tenants need progressive policy and regulation of the rental sector. In Dublin, rents have increased by 34% since 2011 and are increasing to rates last witnessed during the so-called boom. Housing rents have gone up by 8.8% while rents for apartments in the capital are up a massive 9.4%. Currently, landlords have the power to demand more rent at will, which is directly driving people into homelessness.

We call on Dáil Éireann to recognise that the capping of rent supplement must be stopped, simultaneous to the introduction of rent controls, to ensure rents demanded by landlords do not escalate to meet any increase in the rent cap. Government spending on social housing fell by €1.2 billion between 2008 and 2014. In 2013, approximately 750 units were built by local authorities and approved housing bodies, AHBs, with a further 1,200 delivered through leasing arrangements. That year, a surge in households waiting for housing were transferred from rental supports into the RAS. In the long term social housing must be sustainable, and its provision ought not to be based on the private market. Tenants who need social housing are now trapped by rent supplement, which is subsidising private landlords. These subsidies are policies of Fine Gael, the Labour Party and Fianna Fáil. We, in Sinn Féin, do not believe we have arrived here by chance. There can be little doubt that a history of bad policy has sown the seeds of our current crisis.

Modular housing has been mentioned as part of the solution to the housing crisis but it is imperative that it is not a permanent one that supplants State-led development of social housing. The development of modular housing in the short term has the potential to take people off the streets and out of hotels and bed and breakfasts, but there are serious challenges around how modular housing would work in practical terms. Among our solutions to the crisis, we propose that NAMA engages with local authorities to provide funding as well as properties that can be utilised for housing need.

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