Housing charity calls on Government to double social and cost-rental housing
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Irish tenants’ advocacy body Threshold has called for a doubling of social and cost-rental housing in order to bring an end to the ongoing housing crisis.
The charity made the call at its annual conference in Dublin on Thursday. Threshold’s national advocacy manager Ann-Marie O’Reilly noted that, given the number of people whose housing needs are not being met in Ireland, other models of housing provision need to be considered.
Ever-spiralling house property prices together with sky-high rents have left Ireland in a chronic position regarding housing, with a record 14,429 people recently reported as homeless in the State at the end of July.
“Insecurity of tenure and unaffordable rents continue to be among the top issues Threshold deals with from clients,” Ms O’Reilly said.
“While some headway is being made, a longer-term blueprint — with the commitment of successive governments — for a new housing system is needed to tackle these challenges and provide long-lasting solutions,” she said.
In calling for the number of social housing units to double. Threshold is matching the recommendation of the Housing Commission, which earlier this year said that the Government should increase the levels of social and cost rental housing to 20% of the national stock.
Ms O’Reilly said that as things stand such social housing accounts for about 9% of all housing nationwide, or 182,000 rental units.
She said that in meeting the Housing Commission’s recommendations and bringing the stock of social and cost-rental housing to 360,000 units Ireland would be embracing a unitary housing system, also used in several other European countries, notably the Netherlands and Germany.
“This type of housing system has the potential to improve access, affordability and security across all tenures,” Ms O’Reilly said.
Threshold’s CEO John-Mark McCafferty concurred, saying the body is “strongly advising the transition to a unitary housing system to ensure that we have an Irish housing structure that is both equitable and sustainable”.
“Securing political commitment from one government’s term to another and planning now for the future will enable us to set out a roadmap to transform the delivery of housing in Ireland,” he said.
The conference heard that such an expansion of cost-rental housing would serve to relieve the pent-up pressure on housing supply in Ireland to a great extent.
Keynote speaker Dr Richard Waldron, a lecturer in spatial planning at Queen’s University in Belfast, told the conference that the scale of such output needs to be significantly increased, at least triple the 18,000 such units targeted by 2030 via the Government’s Housing For All policy programme.
He noted that as things stand cost-rental housing in Ireland is primarily being provided by the Land Development Agency and the affordable housing bodies, and queried why local authorities could not lead the development of their own cost-rental schemes.
“Local authorities backed by multi-year and targeted budgets; adequate resourcing; shared services and expertise; and economic rents, would surely be a key instrument in delivering cost-rental housing at scale,” Dr Waldron said.
The conference also stressed the importance a residential zoned land tax could play in the delivery of social housing. That tax was due to be introduced last February, but has been deferred until 2025.
Threshold said it “believes this measure could play an important role in the delivery of social and cost-rental homes once introduced, given that land accounts for up to 15% of the cost of delivering houses and up to 11% of delivering apartments”.