Homelessness is a policy choice

There has been plenty promised but little delivered by this Government on housing. By Bev Cotton.

When is a promise not a promise?  When it's made by the Irish Government.  Ireland failed to ratify or legislate for the right to housing despite undertaking to do so by signing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1953.  Instead it promoted housing 'development' as a profiteering activity.  The result: there are plenty of houses, but people can't afford to be in them. The speculators who fuelled the housing bubble are still being rewarded for their failures. For example, as Nama Wine Lake reported recently, NAMA have struck a deal with the Dublin Docklands Development Authority "which appears to wipe out any legacy liability on the part of the DDDA for...one of the dumbest property development gambles in Irish history".

Meanwhile over 300,000 homes, "more than double the official estimate", are lying empty around the country according to research commissioned by the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland.  They say: "If you take the upper end of these figures, it suggests more than 18% of the state’s houses are empty compared with 7.3% in Europe and 3.4% in Britain." The number of ghost estates, where most or all the houses are empty, "has risen from 2,846 last year to 2,881 this year", according to the Department of the Environment.

But while top property developers are being bailed out, smaller fish are not.  Threshold has told the Irish Examiner that, "thousands of tenants face eviction as landlords who bought properties on the buy-to-let market at the height of the boom default on mortgages."  The organisation fears that "many of the 500,000 people in the private rental sector could be the victims of a new wave of repossessions, as receivers handling repossessed properties for the banks throw out tenants with little or no notice."

Despite the rights of tenants with established tenancies, Threshold has witnessed "a growing number of cases before the courts where tenants’ legal protections under the Residential Tenancies Act have been flagrantly ignored."

Street homelessness rises by as much as 30%

On the streets the results are not yet officially being recognised while we wait for the results of the 2011 census. The housing charity the Dublin Simon Community has reported, however, "a 20% growth in the number of people presenting to services" through 2009 and 2010. Their Rough Sleeper Team saw an increase of "over 30%” over the same period.  According to Sam McGuinness, CEO the organisation: "Our figures show an increase every quarter, throughout 2009 and right into 2010.  Last year 2,450 people accessed all our services and in the first six months of 2010 we have already worked with over 1,800 people."

The human cost is shocking.  Cork Simon conducted a survey of 188 people using their project and found that 66% had an underlying mental health problem; 59% had an underlying physical health problem; 51% required medical treatment during the week of the study; and 8% had attempted suicide in the previous six months.

A social system in meltdown, so what is the government going to do?

There is a high cost to the current policy of keeping homeless families in inadequate, unsuitable and expensive temporary housing while making private landlords rich at the expense of the state.  Focus Ireland, the housing charity, has estimated that "It currently costs €19.5m per year to provide emergency or transitional accommodation to 987 Dublin households- €12.5m per year." The Irish Council for Social Housing reports that the number of households on local authority waiting lists had risen from 56,000 in 2008 to just under 100,000 in March 2011, while the number of people receiving Rent Supplement has jumped to 91,100. As of July this year, 14,000 households were in receipt of Mortgage Interest Relief – this compares with 8,000 at the end of 2008 and 4,000 at the end of 2007. Meanwhile, "more than 96,000 households [are] in mortgage arrears," according to a Central Bank of Ireland report released this year.

The government has claimed, meanwhile, that it has increased direct funding to housing charities, but as Focus Ireland notes: "Many voluntary homeless service providers experienced significant reductions in funding levels in 2010 as a result of HSE cuts and reductions in charitable donations."

The budget

The government doesn't even have a Housing Minister at the moment, and has no plans to appoint one until after the budget.  So how will they come through on budget day?   A pre-election pledge from the Simon Community was signed by all political parties, including the two now in government.

It runs: "If elected to government we will ensure that tackling homelessness will be one of our top priorities. We believe in people and pledge to work with all organizations to ensure that housing, healthcare and other supports are available to everyone at risk of or experiencing homelessness.”

So: another firm promise on housing. Job done. {jathumbnailoff}

Image top: Tadhg O'Sullivan.