Over the last week we have heard from the real people behind the seemingly interminable housing crisis.
The people who have had to sit on trains for hours, move back in with their parents, endure the stress of escalating construction costs and live in hostel rooms.
“It’s like a prison cell,” Jessica Molloy told Jack White in an instalment of the Housing Crisis and Me series.
The mother-of-three has been living in a hostel room in Dublin’s north inner city with two of her children since May and has been told it could be another two years before she is housed.
READ MORE
“Our whole life has been turned upside down,” she said.
The lives of a generation have been turned upside down by this crisis, and with the situation appearing only to get worse for those enduring it, how has the Government planned to address it?
Jessica’s situation is becoming more and more prevalent across the country; a trend that has been consistently going the wrong way.
By the end of August, the number of homeless people had reached a new record, reaching over 16,300, including more than 5,100 children.
This compares to 3,285 people living in emergency accommodation in the same period in 2015. That means over the course of 10 years, the number of families similar to Jessica’s has increased almost fivefold, despite it being called an emergency crisis as far back as 2014 by then-minister of state for housing, Jan O’Sullivan.
That government unveiled a plan to eliminate homelessness by 2016. Instead, the situation has got worse.
Private companies are benefiting from this, with the State spending €1.84 billion on providing emergency accommodation between 2013 and 2024, largely on for-profit providers.
Meanwhile, the number of households benefiting from the State’s Housing Assistance Payment (Hap) – a subsidy for renting private accommodation – has also increased year-on-year, starting at 16,940 in 2016 up to 68,180 in 2022.
Hap is only given to those eligible for social housing, meaning people who should be accommodated in State-provided social housing are instead competing for homes on the private rental market.
This is making an already over-heated market reach boiling point.
The only real long-term solution is for the State to build more social homes.
It has been making progress on this front, though it is modest. In 2016, it built, acquired or leased 5,713 new homes. In 2024, that figure was 10,581, although it has been hovering around this 10,000 mark since 2019.
If we are to reduce, or eliminate, the suffering of families like Jessica’s, then the State’s construction and acquisition of new homes must be increased at a faster rate.
For Aiva Tuohy and her partner Dylan Tone, the only solution to becoming homeless was to move back in with his parents and eventually build a log cabin in their garden.
The young couple were evicted from their rental accommodation in Galway and could not find anywhere in the west and midland counties within their €1,600 monthly budget.
While they are grateful to have parents who can take them in and allow them build a modular home on their land, Aiva wondered why they had not just emigrated, given how hard they were finding the housing process.
“Sometimes I don’t understand why we’re still here because of how bad it is,” she said.
She isn’t the only one feeling that way. Research conducted by Red C on behalf of the National Youth Council of Ireland (NYCI) in September found three in five under-25s were considering emigration, with almost one in three strongly considering leaving Ireland to seek a better quality of life. Eighty-four per cent of respondents said the housing crisis disproportionately affected them.
While the promise of a better life elsewhere gnaws at many young people trying to navigate the housing crisis, the option of a log cabin in a parent’s garden does give comfort to some.
Changes to planning regulations that would allow people build these modular-style homes – up to 45 sq m (484 sq ft) in size – at the back of homes without having to secure planning permission are being finalised by Government.
But are these kinds of tweaks around the edges getting away from the main point, which is about how we build more homes, faster?
Irish entrepreneur John Collison wrote last week that Ireland was going backwards when it came to the housing crisis, and proposed a radical realignment of power to address it.
Politicians should have more autonomy on large-scale infrastructure projects, and agencies and quangos should have less control over planning matters, he wrote.
While Minister for Housing James Browne has made efforts to rule from the top, such as directing all councils to reopen their development plans and zone more land for housing, it would appear more profound change is needed.
Until then, the stories of those stuck on long train commutes, in their parent’s spare room, living four to a room in emergency accommodation, and paying huge prices to renovate their homes, will continue to appear on these pages.
