Republican News · Thursday 28 February 2002

Ó Caoláin demands more local authority housing

The government has thrown the baby out with the bath water and relegated the local authorities to a marginal role in housing provision. There is no valid reason we cannot have well planned, well constructed local authority housing.

Local authority housing has become the 'Cinderella' of the system, according to Cavan/Monaghan Sinn Féin TD Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin. Speaking in the Dáil on 20 February on the Housing Bill, he said action was needed to reduce local authority waiting lists and the government needed to empower and resource councils to provide more homes.

He said the "real housing legacy" of the current government would not be this legislation but "the continuing housing crisis, with some 60,000 applicant units or households, representing around 150,000 people, on local authority waiting lists.

"Since 1996," he said, "the number on local authority waiting lists has risen by over 40%. There are, of course, many others not on local authority housing waiting lists for whom housing has become unaffordable and they, too, must be counted as part of the huge need for decent homes in our society.

"I accept that the numbers in need of housing have risen dramatically during the government's term of office and it is a real challenge to meet that need. With the resources at its disposal over the past five years, no government has been better placed to do it. Much has been done and there have been improvements in local authority provision, but this government has been driven by a market ideology. Its housing policy, such as it is and as reflected in the Bill, relies almost totally on the market, and the profit motive of developers and the construction industry, to meet a massive social need. This policy has failed and always will.

"The Bill provides a legislative basis for what is called social and affordable housing. The very terminology is an admission of failure. It reflects the reality that decent housing is beyond the affordable reach of huge sections of our society. The National Economic and Social Forum in its report on social housing concluded that 'home ownership is now beyond the reach of most people on average incomes'.

"It is often said that some people know the price of everything and the value of nothing. In the marketplace, on which the government relies totally for housing provision, what matters most is the price of houses as products for sale and as investments, not their value as homes for real people. Perhaps the additional measures on social and affordable housing in the Bill represent a recognition of that failure, but it is a belated recognition.

"The mindset of market price rather than social value is apparent in some of the objections we have heard raised against the provision of a proportion of new housing developments for social and affordable housing. So fixated with house prices have some people become that they object to what they regard as lower class housing in their neighbourhood. This is partly a product of the over-inflated prices which people have to pay for houses and, regrettably, also a form of snobbery. Elected representatives have a duty to educate and persuade all members of the community of the social value of this provision. Some elected representatives, no doubt, will be tempted to exploit fears and prejudices and thus create further division."

POSITIVE SCHEME

Ó Caoláin said his own view of the social and affordable housing scheme was positive but there was an overreliance on it by the government:

"It is no substitute for an all-out attack on the housing crisis based on a comprehensive social housing programme led by the local authorities, with front-loading of funding under the National Development Plan.

"Local authority housing continues to be the Cinderella of the system. Of the 49,812 dwellings completed in the year 2000, for example, only 3,155 were local authority housing, a sad fact. The construction industry gives it low priority and concentrates on the lucrative upper tiers of the private housing market. Local authorities, even where they have the resources, often find it impossible to attract contractors to construct housing. The existing housing stock of local authorities suffers from under-resourcing with lack of staffing and funding for maintenance, repair and refurbishment. Again, some welcome progress has been made in this area in recent years, but our local authorities, like our health system, have had to make up for years of neglect and cutbacks. More needs to be done.

"When the government has been called upon to switch the whole emphasis of housing policy to direct provision by local authorities it has repeated a mantra that it does not wish to return to the large local authority housing estates of the past with no facilities and high unemployment. This is another admission of failure. Successive governments allowed housing estates to be built in our cities and towns with low quality housing and little or no facilities, as evidenced in constituencies throughout the jurisdiction. When people's income improved many moved out, leaving a concentration of deprivation in such estates.

"We need to learn the lessons of that experience. Instead, the government has thrown the baby out with the bath water and relegated the local authorities to a marginal role in housing provision. There is no valid reason we cannot have well planned, well constructed local authority housing, in modern well maintained estates with the best community facilities. That is the objective I hoped we could share. The disasters of the past do not have to be repeated if the political will is there. Regrettably, the government has not yet demonstrated it.

"The disasters of the past do not have to be repeated if the political will is there. Regrettably, the government has not yet demonstrated that will.

"In Budget 2002, the government restored interest relief on rented residential property and reduced stamp duty rates for investors. This will worsen the housing crisis by increasing property prices. The housing charity Threshold has said that the major effect of these budget measures would be to stimulate the production of exclusive residences at the top end of the market. The Bill cannot make up for the housing failures of this administration. Its housing record is a catalogue of lost opportunities as the tens of thousands on waiting lists know only too well."