Sir, – In a week when statistics showed an unbelievable soaring in the values of new rents; at a time when Government policy included a 4 per cent cap on new rents; in a month when the Government’s policy of subsidising property refurbishment for the rental market produced seven applications in the Dublin area, despite Simon Coveney’s February 2017 declaration that the initiative could deliver up to 800 homes this year; in a year when the incidence of homeless has increased unrelentingly, despite the Government’s pretence to treat it as an emergency, it is way past the time that the Government abandoned its reliance on the market to fix the homelessness problem. The glaringly obvious fact is that the housing market is broken and so cannot be relied upon to fix anything.
The constant refrain from Government spokespeople on the housing emergency is that supply is the problem. A more honest approach would admit that greed is the problem. Greedy property owners hoard property waiting on the price rises promised by the broken market, thus exacerbating the supply deficit.
Greedy landlords take advantage of this to hike rents far past the then-exorbitant pre-crash levels, thus driving more families into homelessness.
There are voluntary agencies doing their utmost to buck the trend.
For example, last July, you reported that Ó Cualann Cohousing Alliance, a co-operative housing body, is building an estate of 49 houses in Ballymun in Dublin, with prices more than 30 per cent below market value.
You reported Ó Cualann chief executive Hugh Brennan as saying that, “There are five things that determine the price of houses: the cost of land, development levies, developer’s margins, builder’s costs and labour costs. There’s not much I can do about the last two, but the first three is where a co-operative can really make savings.”
Dublin City Council sold the land to the co-op for €1,000 per house plot. The council also waived the development levies of €86.40 per square metre. And Mr Brennan said “We keep (profit) at a 5 per cent developer’s margin, whereas – well who knows what profit private sector developers are making”.
So, what is holding back the Government? And when will the Government get serious about its rent cap, already ludicrously generous to landlords?
And when will they force property hoarders to get their properties back in action, having learned that incentives won’t do it?
And what about getting some movement on all the other positive proposals that have been made by the voluntary groups working closest to the problem?
The anti-water charges movement managed to stop the Government taking action. What does it take to get them into action? By the way, where are the anti-water charges protesters when we need them? – Yours, etc,
MICHAEL STUART,
Malahide,
Co Dublin.