Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

I move:

That Dáil Éireann:

declares a National Housing Emergency to use all necessary resources to resolve the housing crisis since the policies and piecemeal measures of the Government, including the recently announced rules on rents, are wholly inadequate, noting in particular:

— the massive increase in homelessness to approximately 738 families, including 1,571 children;

— the rapid growth of local authority housing waiting lists to between 100,000 and 130,000 households nationally;

— the rise in the numbers forced into the private rented sector of approximately 85,000 people in the last year and approximately 140,000 people since 2011 when this Government came to office, due to lack of affordable housing and Central Bank mortgage lending rules;

— the spiralling rents leading to widespread hardship, impoverishment and homelessness; and

— the fact that this Government has provided the least council housing of any Government in the history of the State;

considers that:

— the root cause of this housing emergency is the slashing of successive capital programmes for social and affordable housing, a privatisation of housing and reliance upon incentivising private developers;

— this continued policy has seen completion of only 20 council homes in the first half of 2015 and a reduction in the Part V of the Planning and Development Act 2000 social/affordable housing obligation from 20 per cent to 10 per cent; and

— the cost of building homes via the private sector is approximately double what direct State building would entail, because of the layers of profit required for different companies in the process, and that homes could be built directly at a cost of around €100,000;

proposes that among the emergency measures should be:

— legislation to ban all economic evictions and repossessions where the sitting tenant has no alternative accommodation and also to remove the grounds of needing a rental property for a relative or wanting to sell it as bases for evicting tenants unless it can be proven that the landlord would otherwise suffer undue economic hardship;

— reversal of the Rent Supplement cuts that have taken place;

— a sufficient number of ‘National Asset Management Agency (NAMA) hotel rooms’, which as of last year accounted for one in eight of all hotel rooms, be dedicated to the emergency accommodation of homeless families with the necessary refurbishments to provide family living facilities including cooking and laundry;

— NAMA to be democratised and transformed into an agency to drive social and affordable home-building, using its vast land banks and billions in resources;

— the conduct of an audit of vacant properties in the State as part of Census 2016, considering that 230,000 habitable vacant properties were identified in Census 2011;

— seeking to acquire tens of thousands of vacant houses and apartments for use as social and affordable housing in order to relieve the crisis in the short term while a massive council housing construction programme gets under way;

— instigating a plan of public investment involving the councils and NAMA to build 100,000 social and affordable homes, including Traveller-specific accommodation, over the next three years, breaching normal European Union (EU) fiscal rules if necessary on the basis that this is an emergency;

— maintaining rent controls linked to the Consumer Price Index and backdated to 2011 levels to bring rents down to affordable levels, particularly in the cities of Dublin, Cork, Galway, Limerick and surrounding areas;

— based on this model, tenants to be empowered to submit unaffordable rents as well as proposed rent increases for review by a democratised and properly resourced Private Residential Tenancies Board (PRTB), whose prior approval would be needed for rent increases and any proposed evictions;

— providing for a write-down of mortgages to affordable levels under a banking system run as a democratic public utility, which serves the interests of society, instead of continuing with privatisation of the banks;

— reducing the official definition of housing affordability from 35 per cent of household income to 20 per cent and to establish this as a target to be achieved through a combination of the above measures, policies to increase wages, and restructuring the tax system in a progressive direction; and

— in implementing all these measures, to fulfil the human right of everyone living in the State, including travellers, refugees and migrants, to secure, affordable housing, which should be the core purpose of Government housing policy; and

further proposes that funding for the emergency measures can involve:

— redirecting the €4.5 billion NAMA plans to lend to developers to build expensive private housing for profit to directly build social and affordable housing at cost price,  along with the estimated €4 billion-plus to come from NAMA sales overseas;

— €2 billion from the Irish Strategic Investment Fund, to be repaid over time through increased income from social and affordable rents;

— progressive taxation on wealth, including ending corporate tax avoidance and using some of the up to €17 billion owed by Apple to the State in back taxes.

— €2 billion from the Irish Strategic Investment Fund, to be repaid over time through increased income from social and affordable rents;

— progressive taxation on wealth, including ending corporate tax avoidance and using some of the up to €17 billion owed by Apple to the State in back taxes.

I propose the motion on behalf of the Anti-Austerity Alliance and I reject the Government's amendment. We chose tonight’s topic in recognition of the fact that there is no more serious and pressing issue in this country than the housing situation. We do not get much time for tabling motions for debate in Private Members’ time. We probably only get two or three opportunities a year and we felt the housing situation was much more pressing than anything else.

Unfortunately, the Minister with responsibility for housing is absent but he has also treated the issue with hyperbole and bluster beyond belief. Last year, he said absolutely everything that can be done will be done and is being done in relation to the housing crisis. He said we are going to clear waiting lists for social housing by 2020, a hugely ambitious claim under any circumstances given that the social housing lists were never previously cleared. In October last year, he said the largest housing programme, probably in the history of the State, was being undertaken by the Government. Unfortunately, for the people who are suffering the misery of the housing crisis and the rents crisis, if the Minister built as many houses as he announced they would not be in their current predicament. Never was so much promised and so little delivered.

In the first part of the motion the Anti-Austerity Alliance calls for a declaration by the Dáil, and the Minister, that this is a national housing emergency. Only then will all the resources that are necessary to resolve the crisis be deployed, including passing any laws necessary to deal with any obstacles in the way of building affordable and social homes. The Minister must recognise that nothing the Government is doing is working. We must approach the problem in the way a previous Government, for example, approached the TB crisis. TB was a scourge in this country that killed many people but it was eliminated through a determined campaign led by the Minister, Noel Browne, and his Government colleagues. It would seem that even the BSE crisis got more attention than this human emergency.

The fact that nothing is working is evidenced by two things that happened today. The first was an increase in homelessness since last month alone. In Dublin, which is the epicentre of the tsunami which Peter McVerry spoke about, 40 more families and 82 more children are homeless. They are now in hotels, sofa surfing or in precarious accommodation. According to the people who come to us on a regular basis, they are now not even guaranteed a hotel place; they are forced to self-accommodate, which means they often end up with no accommodation whatsoever. One homeless family I have been dealing with is in Kildare tonight even though they are from Blanchardstown.

In the motion we call for an emergency measure to be taken. NAMA owns one eighth of all the hotel rooms in this country. A sufficient number of hotel places could and should be refurbished to allow families to cook and have other facilities they need as an emergency measure while houses are being built. The other embarrassing episode for the Government today was the daft.iesurvey. The Government has broken another record because rents have risen more than they have since the Government came to power. The website, daft.ie, showed that rents have jumped by 3.2% in the three month period from July to September. It is the largest three month increase since 2007, since the recession kicked in. Nationally, people are now paying €82 more a month in rent than they did last year, but in Dublin it is much higher. In Dublin West, my constituency, rents have gone up €241 a month in the past two years which means people are paying €241 more per month than they paid two years ago while their income has not increased in a commensurate fashion. The Minister huffed and puffed about rent control and came back empty handed from his spat with Fine Gael.

Contrary to the Government amendment, the issue is not really that complex at all. The new type of homelessness we are talking about – whole family homelessness – exists because of a lack of affordable and social housing. There is a lack of homes affordable to people to buy or rent on the scale that is necessary. One could ask how we will achieve the necessary scale. Is it by giving more incentives to the private rented sector to build? It is clear that has not worked, although it is the main plank of the Government’s strategy. Is it by forcing more people into the private rented sector because the Government has not built council houses? That has not worked either. This is not just a legacy issue from previous regimes as the Government’s self-serving amendment argues. There are now 140,000 more people in the private rented sector since the Government came to power in 2011. That is a phenomenal rise in precarious reliance on landlords. It is not because the Government is trying to catch up now with affordable and local authority home building, which we know has not been happening. The Government has built fewer council houses than any Government ever before it, so let us just nail that one on the head.

I will provide a few brief statistics. In 1975, a total of 8,794 council houses were built, in 1985, it was 6,523 and in 2005, the total was 4,209. However, the situation in 2015 is that 20 council houses were built in the first half of the year. That is an embarrassing figure which the Government is now trying to cover up by saying that the total number of houses built will increase tenfold by the end of the year. Whoopee, we will have 200 council houses by the end of the year. It is incredible that the Government would argue it is doing more than any Government has done previously when one compares this year’s statistics to the others I have outlined. Even when the previous Government operated under the troika in 2008, a total of 4,905 council houses were built and in 2010, a total of 1,328 houses were built. To argue that the Government is doing more is an insult. It will soon be discovered that the emperor is naked because people will see the houses do not exist. Not only is the Government not building council housing, but it has reduced the obligation on developers under the Part V scheme, despite a vociferous debate in this House. That was a shameful decision to make.

One could ask what needs to be done. In the motion, we argue that this is an emergency and we need to take emergency measures. All economic evictions should be outlawed where a person does not have alternative accommodation. We need to stop the haemorrhage of homelessness. All repossessions should end as well where it involves the person renting it having to vacate the property.

The rent supplement cuts must be reversed to keep people in their current homes and to prevent any more people from becoming homeless. Is it not incredible that although there are record numbers on the streets, in hotels or in the misery of paying a huge amount of their income in rent, the State, in the National Asset Management Agency, NAMA, has the biggest construction operation in the country? It has vast landbanks and vast quantities of assets, offices, houses etc., as well as cash reserves and it is not as though the agency does not have any money. NAMA should be turned into an agency for social and affordable housing.

The Minister, Deputy Kelly, told a blatant untruth today in a newspaper article in which he stated NAMA was playing its part in solving homelessness and it would provide starter and affordable homes for people. This is completely untrue as 90% of NAMA's homes will be sold on the open market at market rates, as is currently the case, and consequently this will be no different to any other type of housing estate. The Minister also argued that NAMA cannot be forced to focus exclusively on providing much needed social housing because it has a commercial mandate. However, Focus Ireland has made precisely the same point Members are arguing in this motion, which is the Government has a majority and can change NAMA's mandate at any time. It can bring a proposal before the Dáil at any time and change NAMA's constitution. The Government amendment also argues that NAMA has delivered 1,600 houses and apartments over the years of its existence, which is derisory and pathetic. How many housing units does it have? The books must be opened and the sale of NAMA's assets must be stopped immediately as they must be used as cash reserves for the building of social and affordable housing. Finally, I note NAMA has on its hands €3 billion in cash for development and has an expected €4 billion from overseas sales. Potentially, €7 billion could build 70,000 houses over the next few years were land acquired and simply used, using emergency measures and as the motion notes, there also are billions in the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund.

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