I have a friend who lives in a bedsitter. Let's call her Mary. She worked very hard for years in jobs with unsociable hours and low pay, writes Breda O'Brien
Circumstances did not permit her to access higher education, which would have been the passport to better-paid jobs. She has had a lot of illness and now needs Social Welfare to survive.
This dignified and intelligent person is forced to cut every luxury and much that others would consider necessities. She walks everywhere because she cannot afford bus fares. She cannot afford a telephone, and when her bills are paid, she has virtually no disposable income. The bedsitter, while bigger than many of the matchboxes which are advertised as flats, is draughty and cold.
She would love to move, because some of the other tenants in the house are noisy and inconsiderate and keep her awake late into the night. However, she knows that it is impossible, because even though the rent of €106 is exorbitant for one room, she knows that most bedsitters are far more expensive, and that rents of €120€130 are quite common.
She receives rent supplement, but in what could only be described as a sleight of hand, the Government increased social welfare allowances and at the same time almost doubled the contribution which people have to make towards their rent. So they gave with one hand and took it back with the other.
Remember the outcry about the ending of the first-time buyer's grant? Funnily enough, there was no similar outcry when the Government decided to put a cap on the amount of rent in respect of which health boards may pay rent supplement, even though the consequences are quite devastating for many people.
In simple terms, each health board has an upper limit for rent, and if a person applies for a supplement for a flat with a higher rent, they will receive nothing. The reason given for the cap was the allegation that landlords were increasing rents to the maximum limits payable by health boards. That may well be true, but putting a cap on rent supplement has not stopped them increasing rents.
In the Eastern Region Health Authority area, the upper limit on rent for a single person is now €107. Where does that leave Mary? Last year her rent increased from €90 to €106. If there is a similar increase this year, she will be outside the limits set by the ERHA.
What will she do then? Even if you can find a flat for rent for €107, it will be very basic indeed and quite possibly sub-standard. Many landlords will not accept tenants who are in receipt of rent supplement. Some tenants have solved the dilemma of being above the limit by colluding with the landlord and paying him or her the difference in rent themselves, thus increasing the possibility of sliding into debt. There are lots of people in situations like Mary's. Some of the worst off are lone parents with children. If lone parents cannot secure a flat, they are forced into a nightmare existence of bed-and-breakfast accommodation.
They have to leave during the day and often have to move to another B&B each night. Have you ever tried to walk around Dublin or Galway all day with tired and fractious children, with nowhere to change a nappy and takeaway food the only option for nourishment?
This is a scandal. As a nation, we specialise in righteous indignation and outrage, the subject of which seems to change from week to week. Could we possibly divert some of it to an issue like this on a sustained basis? The only time a peep was raised was when house prices soared, and the middle classes got to sample some of the accommodation that the lower-income groups had put up with for years.
Our housing policy is a shambles. If it had to be compared to a building, it would be a two-room dwelling which has been worked on by a succession of cowboy builders, each of whom either has no planning permission or permission granted by corrupt councillors. The rambling warren which has resulted is dangerous in parts, but no one has the will to fix it.
Rent supplement was meant to be a last-ditch resource to prevent people falling into homelessness. Instead, it has become a cornerstone of our social housing policy. Sadly, it is highly inefficient and inequitable. It subsidises landlords, some of whom are decent and honourable and some of whom have the moral character of the man who was jailed this week for defrauding the revenue of some €1, 000,000 from his 13 rental properties.
Until November 2002 the State had spent some €212 million on rent supplements, up from €179.43 million throughout all of 2001.
Surely some of this money could be invested more wisely in social housing to be provided by the State or voluntary organisations with State backing?
Politically, there is no "joined-up thinking", which would promote a mixed economy of housing provision, including a healthy social housing section and a private rented sector in which standards are enforced. There is no lobby group to demand this which has the clout of builders and developers. Look at the dropping of the 20 per cent social housing provision from new developments, before it had a chance to even be properly tried.
Threshold and Comhairle discuss the morass surrounding rent supplement and related issues in a report this week. It includes some practical and workable suggestions to improve the situation. For example, they suggest a comprehensive housing benefit to replace rent supplement. Yet there is a tentative quality to many of the suggestions. It is almost as if those who work in advocacy for people caught in the accommodation trap have learned that there is no political will to tackle the whole area of housing, despite the fact that models exist internationally which could be drawn upon.
Perhaps the chink of light is now that the middle classes have begun to be affected by the housing crisis. It may lead to some sense of solidarity with those who have no hope of secure housing.