Ten ways to solve our housing crisis as Ireland takes to the streets again to protest the housing shortage
Today Dublin city center will come to a standstill as protesters once again protest against homelessness and our housing crisis which is now 10 years old and far worse than ever. If we really want to solve it, we must finally solve at least the following 10 festering problems:
1. A failure to allocate land for houses and to control its costs
In Ireland, development has long been a cash cow for landowners and developers as politicians have sometimes been involved in planning corruption. So the land was reallocated, the landowner made a murder.
The land was opened up, the developer made a murder. The end user was confronted with prohibitive and inflated prices. The Land Development Agency (LDA) was launched in 2018 with a promise to manage government land for housing and create new land banks for housing.
It recently broke ground in Shanganagh in the Shankill area of one of the state’s largest projects to date of 597 social and affordable housing, with rental costs and 200 classified as pure public housing.
Nearly 1,000 homes are planned in Dundrum and beyond in Cork’s Docklands.
It proves that the LDA is without a doubt one of the best schemes the government has come up with, and it can be the most effective. But why so slowly?
The LDA promised 6,000 apartments by 2026. That’s nonsense. There have been rumors that various state agencies have been dragging their heels to give the LDA promised land. Meanwhile, where is the promised step towards the LDA’s role in building a national bank for new country? In other countries, the equivalents of the LDA are buying up farmland cheaply and reallocating it. Where is this function?
The government must do all it can and pull out all the stops to help the LDA in its role and quickly pave the way for mandatory purchasing powers so it can build this promised land bank. New zones and new zones near the ends of existing rail, dart and luas connections.
2. A failure to allow conversion of existing properties
One after another we had ineffective Living Over the Shop programs that died dead at launch because they were never practical.
At the same time, our inner cities and inner cities are brimming with buildings whose upper floors are empty and decaying. Older listed houses are “protected to death”. A pilot project to split larger houses into two smaller ones was attempted but not meaningfully encouraged. We have to move forward with all of this.
3. Allowing ideology to stand in the way of adequate social housing provision
It seems that both Fine Gael and Fianna Fail seem to think that the large-scale provision of public housing by the state, as has been done here in the past, is somehow an ideologically left-wing or subversive practice.
This decade-long failure is a central cause of the crisis. We need the state to centralize the provision of social housing and remove inefficient and reluctant councils from the equation and just do it.
If we had continued to build our average of 3,000 social housing units per year since 1990, the housing lists would be clear today and the state would make money from rents instead of paying out 1 billion euros in HAP (Housing Assistance Payment) every year. Which brings us to the next problem.
4. The overprivatization of the housing market
Aside from the HAP payments, it’s now $1bn for the same limited supply of property.
When Eoghan Murphy changed planning laws to include large blocks of small apartments with fewer windows than previously required, and combined this with a favorable tax regime, he triggered a tsunami.
Today most new homes being completed in Dublin are bought and managed by a large fund. They are not subject to an upper rent limit and thus drive up market rents.
They export huge amounts of lightly taxed cash out of the country. We need these monies to be properly taxed and they must be discouraged from vacuuming family homes, as previously promised by the Housing Minister in the Dáil Chamber.
5. We must help the construction sector in any way we can
Building material and labor costs have skyrocketed since the beginning of this year. There is a labor shortage because craftsmen left an industry after the crash. The government needs to promote old-fashioned apprenticeships, provide funding programs for builders, and allow skilled workers from other countries to come here. And if we’re really serious, we need to eliminate or reduce VAT on housing-related materials.
6. We must hold the construction sector accountable
Pyrite houses, mica damaged houses and more recently up to 70,000 Celtic Tiger era apartments and semi-detached houses estimated to be in breach of fire safety requirements or general deficiencies. The repair costs run into billions and many of the culprits are still building.
We need to make it clear in the law who is responsible for what, and give violators reasonable penalties — including imprisonment — especially when it involves endangering human life.
7. We need to sort out the planning once and for all Everyone
Towns like Killarney haven’t redesignated land in more than a generation. The same applies to our cities. We need more land that will be repurposed and connected to existing light rail and tram networks in cities.
The problems at An Bord Pleanála need to be resolved and legal obstacles to system verification should be removed. Micheál Martin is right – Nimby objections must be stopped or circumvented, and politicians from the ruling parties who support objections must be punished.
Yes, it’s a democracy, but it’s an emergency.
8. We need to rethink design
When Dublin City Architect Herbie Simms came here in the 1920s, his first task in the massive public housing scheme he initiated was to travel the world looking at different designs for houses to get the best for the least money.
He developed an elaborate menu of basic home formats that were quick to create but also stood the test of quality.
With advances in factory manufacturing, 3D printing, and the introduction of new durable materials, we need to do it again.
Architects from Ireland and abroad should be included in a competition with significant rewards to develop a simple starter pack of cheap but decent homogenous home designs.
9. Shelters for the homeless
We need purpose built complexes of a decent standard to care for our thousands of homeless people and we need to place them in sensible places where the problem is worst.
10. A failure to treat it as an emergency
Bad advisors told Enda Kenny at the time that headlines about a housing crisis were nothing more than developers trying to get tax breaks. One publicly boasted he was renting forever. It took the government three years to acknowledge that a crisis existed. Since then it has consistently failed to take it seriously enough, with 10 years of half-measures and unachieved goals from the last grand plan carried over into the next. It is an emergency. Pretend it is.
https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/ten-ways-to-fix-our-housing-crisis-as-ireland-takes-to-the-streets-again-to-protest-at-the-lack-of-homes-42175044.html Ten ways to solve our housing crisis as Ireland takes to the streets again to protest the housing shortage
