Government housing programmes are simply not up to the scale of thechallenge of meeting the present social need, writes Kieran Murphy
How do you judge success of a Government's track record in housing? Is it, as the Minister for the Environment and Local Government, Mr Cullen, suggested recently, a matter of moderation in house price increases; the number of new houses built; and levels of public expenditure on social housing?
These are indeed achievements.However, our way of judging success looks instead at the outcome, particularly in terms of the length of time it takes for a family to be housed by a local authority or housing association. This is the measure used by the estimated 48,000 households on local authority waiting lists, 60 per cent of whom have spent more than a year waiting for a place they can call home. This is the only real measure of success.
Perhaps Mr Cullen would seek to dismiss our view and describe us as "engaging in self-indulgent rhetoric", and that it is easy for us to criticise as we do not "bear any responsibility for the implementation of practical solutions to the housing problem". While we do not "bear any responsibility for the implementation of practical solutions", we do bear a responsibility for dealing with the fallout of the continued failure of Government to come to grips with the scale and pace of the housing crisis.
This year almost 20,000 people will contact Threshold's advice offices in Dublin, Cork and Galway; the majority are on low incomes, are badly housed and part of those growing numbers who see their local authority as the only hope of ever getting a home. A few examples illustrate their experiences:
the overcrowded family, parents of two teenage and two adult children and two grandchildren living in a three-bedroom semi-detached house while their daughter waits for a local authority house;
the homeless couple with a 13-month-old daughter who had to split up, so that the father went to a men's hostel and the mother and daughter to another before being given bed and breakfast accommodation;
the single mother with a three-year-old son, who received one week's notice to move out of her private rented property just three weeks before Christmas.
Government housing programmes are simply not up to the scale of the challenge of meeting this social need. The Bill amending Part V of the Planning and Development Act, 2000, further undermines social housing programmes, represents a bonus to builders and developers and sacrifices the needs of vulnerable households.
Moreover, the Bill is not an isolated backward step by Government. Last month's Budget cut Exchequer funding for social housing programmes by 6 per cent, even though the National Development Plan envisaged a 10 per cent increase in output in 2003. The Department of Social and Family Affairs announced that the maximum allowable for rent supplement would be frozen through all of 2003, while the personal contribution made by tenants in the private sector was to increase by some 60 per cent.
There is no doubt that the Bill is a retreat. Mr Cullen, in his article, says that the 20 per cent rule under Part V hasn't worked, but it never had a chance. Builders and developers were encouraged to resist the new rules when, in the run up to the general election earlier this year, several parties made a commitment in their manifestos to reviewing Part V. Then in June the Fianna Fáil-Progressive Democrat new programme for government promised and quickly undertook a review. In fact the Minister has buckled under their pressure without giving the rule any opportunity to bed down.
It is only too clear who are winners and losers. The Minister argues that by caving in he is retrieving 80,000 new homes over two years. He does not mention that by the same token he must be giving up on 15,000 new social and affordable homes. Without the withering rule Part V is essentially postponed for at least three years. It should be retained, not dropped.
The Minister boasts that the levies on the "unwithered" building and the money gained from developers avoiding the 20 per cent rule will go towards new social and affordable investment by the local authorities and other approved bodies. It is difficult to guarantee that such money can for any length of time be ring-fenced to yield extra housing units over and above what would otherwise have been financed by the Exchequer. The Bill should contain provisions to ensure genuine incrementality.
The Minister supports socially integrated communities, where rich and poor have the same access to local schools, public transport and so on. Enactment of the amendment Bill, however, will drastically undercut that thrust; few developers are voluntary pioneers in social integration. Earlier this month the Minister of State for Housing and Urban Renewal opened a new social housing project on Clarion Quay, Dublin. We are unlikely to see such mixed community development again. Rather our children will point to Clarion Quay as a museum piece of Irish social housing history. The long waits for social housing will be the continuing feature with which our children will be all too familiar.
Threshold seeks changes to the Government's Bill to retain the withering rule, to allow flexibility without undermining the scope for social integration and to ensure that "indulgence" money from builders and developers actually adds to the amount of social housing investment.
Kieran Murphy is director of Threshold