The price of houses may have dropped temporarily but recent conversations reminded me forcibly that the housing crisis has not gone away, writes Breda O'Brien.
One was with a person recently housed by Focus Ireland, who is very grateful but acutely aware that friends in the private rented sector face prohibitive rents, insecure tenure and often sub-standard accommodation.
Another was with a lone parent who qualifies for the Shared Ownership Scheme but who experiencing great difficulty locating a house which she can afford under the terms of the scheme.
The last was with a couple where the wife works in the home caring for four children. The husband earns €54,000 a year but they still cannot afford to buy the relatively modest home they are seeking because lending agencies will only lend them three times his salary. As they have been paying high rents for years, their own savings will not meet the shortfall.
All of them felt that the recent budget illustrated very clearly whose needs were being looked after, and that it was not people like themselves.
Builders and developers lobbied very hard, suggesting that the construction industry was in deep trouble. The Irish Home Builders Association claimed that there was going to be a fall in house completions as a result of social housing and anti-investor provisions. Yet when figures for the third-quarter of 2001 were released, it showed that house completions were 5 per cent up on the previous year. A strange kind of collapse.
As a result of building sector lobbying, Charlie McCreevy reintroduced Section 23, a scheme which offers tax incentives to investors. Even the construction industry expected it to be back-loaded, i.e. that investor-related tax relief would only be accessed when the developer complied with all relevant legislation, and was considered to be delivering a quality product to the tenant.
This did not happen. So will we have more of the kind of apartments which a doctor some months ago alleged were causing stress disorders due to the sub-standard level of sound insulation?
Allegedly Section 23 is to allow more rental accommodation to come on stream but it is likely to increase availability in the upper and middle end of the rental market, and to do nothing for those on lower incomes.
Those who are in private rented accommodation and dependent on social welfare will find it no easier to find landlords who will provide rent receipts. Currently in Dublin, a bedsitter can cost £100 a week. It is practically impossible for families on low incomes to get rented accommodation.
Around €180,303,000 is being spent on supplementary welfare allowance as a subsidy for those who are in private rented accommodation. There are stringent criteria for those receiving it, but this Government subsidy which benefits landlords does not provide security for tenants and does nothing to tackle the underlying causes of the current crisis.
Meanwhile, the lone parent and the couple who are wage-earners are both afraid that the reintroduction of Section 23 will push up house prices yet again. That may happen, but either way it does nothing to improve their situation.
Charlie McCreevy could rightly point to the fact that total capital expenditure on housing next year will be almost €1.1 billion. Yet we seem to be going backwards in relation to social and affordable housing.
Social housing is usually rental in nature, linked to social need, involving some State subsidy and a non-profit landlord, usually the State but sometimes the voluntary sector. Affordable housing involves State subsidy to bridge the gap for those who in previous times would have been able to buy their houses outright, and usually involves part ownership by the tenant.
On December 4th, Bertie Ahern admitted in response to a parliamentary question from Eamon Gilmore that targets for social housing set by the current partnership agreement would not be met.
This is an extraordinary admission but passed almost without comment. If these very minimal targets are not met now, when will they be? Under the Planning and Development Act, up to 20 per cent of new developments had to be set aside for social and affordable housing. It appears that only 14 local authorities plan to enforce the full 20 per cent.
All sorts of propaganda was brought into play to undermine this plan, as though provision of social housing were a guarantee of having your very own scrap merchant living next door to you, complete with rusting cars. The only problem with the propaganda was that far from it being the poorest of the poor who are now in need of social housing, the lists are now crowded with the middle classes who cannot afford to own their own homes.
At present only about 10 per cent of housing stock is in social housing, which is very low in contrast to the European average.
Our European neighbours rent in the knowledge they have rights and security of tenure. We have a kind of Catch 22 here. Irish people want to own their own homes. The love of home-owning in Ireland will not change while the alternative is insecure, low standard rental accommodation. Yet a healthier situation would be to have greater diversity of tenancy, including everything from housing co-operatives to State social housing.
It is easy but probably unfair to point the finger at the deficiencies of the local authorities but they have been grossly under-resourced. Other countries have invested heavily in schools of housing studies. A central housing authority may be part of the answer. However, unless those in local government with responsibility for housing receive adequate training and resources, an authority will become another layer of bureaucracy.
We need research to establish exactly what the current level of need is and to project needs over the next 10 to 20 years. There is no point in setting targets and then, like Bertie Ahern, having to admit we cannot meet them. If a co-ordinated vision is not put in place, the kind of conversations I have had recently will go on happening, and the Government will face severe punishment at the polls.
bobrien@irish-times.ie