State reliant on private sector in housing crisis

Finally we are beginning to see some real detail as to how Minister for the Environment Alan Kelly intends tackling the national housing crisis. And what is emerging is an enormous reliance on the private sector.

In his foreword to his Social Housing Strategy 2020, published last November, he says: "The strategy restores the State to a central role in the direct provision of social housing through a resumption of building on a significant scale."

Certainly the numbers are impressive. Some 110,000 households would be housed under the strategy. There would be 35,000 new units of social housing provided, while 75,000 households would be “supported” in the private rented sector.

Leasing arrangements

The Irish Times has seen details from the four Dublin authorities, as well as from Limerick, Galway and Waterford as to where their new units will be sourced.

What is emerging is how few will be council-owned – as low as 24 per cent in South Dublin County Council and 26 per cent in the cases of Fingal and Galway city. The majority will come from leasing arrangements with the private sector.

This matters, as it means the vast majority of new “social housing units” will not be council homes where the household’s tenancy is secure and the rent regulated. They will be homes where the private landlord or developer may choose to opt out at relatively short notice.

As the numbers of low-income families losing their homes in the private sector continue to climb, particularly in Dublin and Cork, this reliance on the same sector must be worrying. What is even more striking is how tiny the targets are relative to the size of the housing lists.

Detailed targets

The combined housing list for the seven local authorities from which

The Irish Times

obtained detailed targets

is 52,498 households. The number of new units they plan over the next two years and eight months is 9,080. Of these, 65 per cent, or 5,871, are to be privately sourced.

Only 3,209 units will be council-owned housing (35 per cent) in these seven local authorities.

South Dublin County Council was the only authority to provide a target number of households to be transferred from rent-supplement on to the new housing assistance payment (HAP).

This year alone, it plans to move 1,735 households on to HAP. They will be taken off the housing list but remain in the private-rented sector. It plans 1,445 units of social housing by the end of 2017, of which 350 will be council-owned.

In October, the Minister said: “The privatisation of social housing should never have happened . . . It was wrong, and it was more than wrong, it was simply unacceptable and we are going to change that.”

Certainly the local authorities are back managing the provision of social housing. The significance of their move back to house building and public housing provision, however, remains questionable.