It was noteworthy in the first episode of The Traitors Ireland that, when asked what they would spend the prize money on, most contestants said that it was for a house deposit. Faye summarised it by quipping, “everyone needs a house”. In Homesick this is referred to as the “Sisyphean struggle facing those who are fruitlessly saving up to buy”.
This book is a brilliant capture of the recent history of housing in one specific location, London. Written by Peter Apps and covering housing policy from the 1980s to today, including the political and societal influences that have shaped it, Homesick is detailed but incredibly digestible. It’s also very relevant to Ireland, with plenty of clarion calls and a veritable flock of canaries in the coalmine of a housing crisis that both our islands share.
One thing it does particularly well is to break down some of the problematic narratives that persist in housing policy discussions. Take for example, the idea that social housing estates are all crime-ridden ghettos. In Homesick, we get a much more longitudinal view, including the joyous community spirit that first permeated these estates before politics got in the way and triggered a range of issues that have brought them to where they are now - in disrepair, derelict, underserviced and tragically, in the hands of private entities rather than the State.
Homesick also does a great job of breaking down some of the technical terminology that we hear in housing debates but that is understood to varying degrees by not just the general public but arguably many policy makers: regeneration, Right to Buy, gentrification, leasehold, ALMO. How housing interacts with other societal factors is also very well explained throughout, particularly in terms of equality, rights, labour and economics.
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In three sections: past, present and future, Apps walks us through London’s housing story. The first section takes up almost half of the pagecount and is dense with detail. However, it’s also rich with voices of lived experience. We meet a cast of characters whose journeys, and those of their children and grandchildren, bring to life throughout the book the real impact of the political decisions made in Westminster.
Next is the shortest but arguably the hardest section to get through, given how it documents the grim existence of some of the people in London’s current social housing and rental offerings. The accounts of inhumane treatment of people in poverty by private actors, and the horrific health implications for children in substandard housing, are gut wrenching. “And so far things look set to continue as they are: a flourishing property market for those at the top and the avoidable deaths of children for those at the bottom.”
The final section first covers unique demographic and climate predictions that London must consider. There is also growing concern of a tipping point as the city empties of all but its wealthiest inhabitants. Homesick then documents how while children are leaving London en masse, older renters are a timebomb that will change the face of retirement. In the final pages, Apps sets out a way forward. “Not a manifesto” but an outline of ways in which a future path could be course corrected - repair and reuse, rent controls, municipalisation. He’s not hopeful the course will be corrected, but clear that it could be with the right political will.
Margaret Thatcher features heavily as a catalyst in moving housing policy from being informed by welfare to being driven by capitalism. The choices she made in the 1980s took effect in the ensuing decades as schemes such as Right to Buy, and the privatisation of the entire system, gradually dismantled the very concept of social housing in Britain.
It’s genuinely heartbreaking to read the detail of how we stopped thinking about housing as homes and instead as assets. Reversing this is the focus of many housing campaigners today and it comes to the fore time and again in Homesick. “We have deliberately changed the primary purpose of houses from providing a home for a family to providing an income-generating asset for an investor.”
My overwhelming takeaway from this book is the importance of naming the privilege of home ownership. Our chances of owning a home are determined by the social class we’re born into, and increasingly what year we were born. I worked hard to own my own home but I also benefit from continually rising house prices. And the policies responsible for that have simultaneously frozen out most people younger than me from ever owning their own home.
If we want to see a radical shift in housing policy (and I absolutely do), then we have to acknowledge and accept that there will, and should, be sacrifices made by those of us in society fortunate enough to own our own homes.
Sinéad Gibney is a Social Democrats TD for Dublin-Rathdown
