Sep
Letter to Irish Examiner
Housing and Homelessness Crisis
Dear Editor,
The Minister for Housing upon taking up office rightly described the Housing and Homelessness issues as a crisis. His recently published plans to deal with the issues upon examination gives little comfort. His plan is to continue to use the private sector to build Social Housing. This has been the preferred method of successive governments since the early eighties the net result of which is well over 100,000 on waiting lists and over 2,000 children living in Hotel accommodation. The numbers indicate only one fact and that is that this policy has been an absolute failure. Local Authorities nationwide built only 75 houses nationwide in 2015.
We in the One Cork group of Unions have presented Cork City Council with a proposal to put to Government. This proposal asks that Local Authorities be allowed to build Housing using the direct labour model. This was the policy of successive governments through the 50's 60's and 70's. This policy helped do away with slums, created decent job's and created apprenticeship opportunities for school leavers. It also helped the physical and mental health of working class people and their families. God knows construction workers have suffered most from the crash of our economy.
Fiscal rules mean that the monies needed to fund such a project have to be kept off the states balance sheet. Using the Capital Loan and Subsidy Scheme the Government access's funds for Approved Housing Bodies to build Social Housing. With a little re engineering this could also be used by leaving Local Authorities set up building Agencies thus keeping the monies borrowed off the States balance sheet.
The proposal would be in fact self financing as the rents collected could be used to service the loans. The benefits to the states coffers are also quite obvious with an increased tax take and fewer people in receipt of Social Welfare payments. Both the Local Authorities and Nama own vast land banks which could be used to either build on or sold to also fund the proposal. With interest rates at an all time low it would be foolish to miss this opportunity. Local Authorities would also only need to cover the cost of the building projects while private development would be obviously profit driven increasing the cost of building the homes needed.
This proposal is not mentioned in the Ministers report it simply proposes more of the same failed policies. Politicians should beware the taxpayer funding private entities with little or no accountability.This has led to the abuse of taxpayers monies the disaster that was Console to name just one in a long line of such such problems.
Barry Murphy,
One Cork Group of Unions.