This week in Coronation Street a character decided to put his house on the market. He doesn't want to trade up or down, but only to make what he called "a fresh start". The house is a structurally sound, two-storey terraced dwelling, in need of decoration. The asking price is £28,500 sterling.
Property in Manchester runs well below house values outside London. But buying in Coronation Street is, in ways, as practical an ambition as buying in any Irish urban area. First-time buyers, tenants and increasing numbers on the social housing lists cannot hope to find affordable housing with security of tenure any more.
Householders now routinely use the phrase "make a killing" when talking about what possibilities their new-found capital assets imply. Fall-out from the Celtic Tiger's housing-prices boom works like a nuclear catastrophe contaminating people's most basic needs.
So many truisms litter the language of housing that it is hard not to become desensitised. For example, whether you're a single person earning less than £27,000 or among some 90 per cent of social housing applicants who earn less than £10,000 a year, it is unlikely that you will ever be able to buy, rent or otherwise occupy a place you can rely on as your own. Social housing is now at its lowest relative rate since the State was founded.
Housing is still not a social right, other than for the minority whose ownership rights are protected since 1937. The context in which ideas of ownership emerged then was wholly different. It wasn't so much a matter of protecting private property for its own sake, but rather a question of what assaults on private ownership might imply. There were real fears that Ireland would be taken over by Bolshevism.
Using various complicated excuses, people who need housing are being told now that the Constitution is too rigid to foster sufficient legal change (is it a sacred cow?), or land is tied up, or demographics have changed faster than the ability of support services to cope with them. In other words, the problem is too big to solve.
THE best excuse this week came from Bertie Ahern, when he spoke at the publication of the National Economic and Social Forum's report on the housing crisis (which is available on www.nesf.ie). Not enough labour, he argued, and the building trades are already working to capacity. God bless the lads, they're going as fast as they can.
The remarks probably hit a chord with anyone trying to get their heating fixed for winter, or have a few roof tiles replaced before the rains get heavy enough to pour through. It may be the case that such householders are his target market - over-35s, middle-class and willing to sympathise with unfortunate first-time buyers or housing list applicants, before having their kitchens redone while they are away inspecting a new villa development in Marbella.
The superficiality of Ahern's remarks makes it legitimate to ask whether he and his Government have the political will to start to make inroads on housing. Without tough, urgent action, the next Government, which he may well lead, could be facing a level of social unrest and displacement that will make the recent train-drivers' dispute look like a bun fight.
Ahern's efforts to rationalise the housing crisis have been surrounded with much clanging of cymbals but few lasting results. The three Bacon reports he commissioned appear to have approached the problem of the Irish house with the same mentality speculators use when they stud-partition an old property so as to mask the damp. The fault was not the author's. As the NESF points out, dealing with the housing crisis in a fragmented way makes it almost impossible to get at its foundational issues.
Looking at tenure across a range of areas puts the crisis in a more manageable context, although the core changes needed to turn things round don't get easier. My house has increased in value by such an exorbitant amount I could now refinance the mortgage to acquire a top-range Porsche without much difficulty.
If I were to rent it out, the profit I could make over the actual mortgage cost would be at least double my outgoings. The potential for greed this encourages hasn't escaped me. Trouble is, how would I accommodate a family of five? We can't live in a Porsche.
The rental sector has pumped up charges to a point where a young child-free couple of whatever background must consider paying in excess of £600 a month in Dublin for a basic place to live. These are subject to few controls, either by Government or by the auctioneers, who profit increasingly from the sector by retaining their blame-free status. I visited one such premises last month, and was shown a bedroom where the mattress was on top of a built-in wardrobe. This is not an exaggeration.
Even if the Government was to admit that it can't deliver social housing or encourage private housing at the rates needed, it refuses to devise a fair system of rights and responsibilities that balance landlords' needs with those of tenants. There appears to be no forward planning for whatever eventualities arise within the next five years.
Labour is available, if non-citizens are given the right to work. Land is available, if the fractured powers of different departments and local authorities can be pulled together in a radically different way.
The NESC report indicates that in future housing will be possible only for the wealthiest members of society, and for the most damaged. The good news is that public opinion must turn within the next year because it finds the situation intolerable. The bad news is this will only happen because the problem of accommodation is about to rock us sheltered middle classes, too.
mruane@irish-times.ie