{"id":277812,"date":"2023-12-12T07:58:35","date_gmt":"2023-12-12T07:58:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=277812"},"modified":"2023-12-13T08:56:00","modified_gmt":"2023-12-13T08:56:00","slug":"irelands-housing-crisis-is-a-disaster-for-its-people-and-a-gift-to-far-right-fearmongers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=277812","title":{"rendered":"Ireland\u2019s housing crisis is a disaster for its people \u2013 and a gift to far-right fearmongers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Introduction<\/strong><\/h1>\n

We post this as an example of how the corporate media, and the educational establishment – the writer is a associate professor\/senior lecturer in social policy – are being used to misinform and misdirect attention. In this case, how \u201cconspiracy theories\u201d, the \u201cfar right\u201d and \u2026 \u201ctoxic masculinity\u201d are being blamed for Ireland’s housing crisis. Ed..<\/p>\n

Rory Hearne \u2013 The Guardian Dec 10, 2023<\/strong><\/h1>\n

Ireland is in a dark place. Riots in Dublin<\/a> last month exposed to the world the presence of a small, nascent but emboldened far right. A complex range of factors underlie this: social media conspiracy theories, toxic masculinity<\/a>, an ugly underbelly of racism and persistent social and economic inequalities. But the far right is also weaponising a decade-long housing and homelessness crisis that afflicts the entire country and has placed thousands of people in a state of chronic housing stress, anxiety and fear.<\/p>\n

The riots did not surprise those of us who have been warning about the rise of racism directed at immigrants. We have seen how the housing crisis is used to whip up hate against newly arriving asylum seekers. It doesn\u2019t much matter to those who attack temporary accommodation centres <\/a>for refugees that such buildings would never become private homes. Their message is that Ireland is \u201cfull\u201d and we should house \u201cour own\u201d first<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The truth, however, is that Ireland\u2019s shortage of affordable housing has not been caused by an increase in numbers of immigrants or refugees, but by 30 years of policies that have left delivery to the property market while decimating social housing. My phone pings daily with messages on social media from people who are losing their home. In the past few days, a disabled woman asked me to share her plea for \u201cimmediate accommodation\u201d, as she is being evicted. A worker for Dublin city council is being evicted, but he and his family can\u2019t afford any of the rents on flats they have viewed. He told me: \u201cI clean our streets every day, and I haven\u2019t even a home I can clean for myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hundreds of thousands of similar stories can be heard across Ireland. The president, Michael D Higgins, does not have a political role, but he has attacked the handling<\/a> of the housing \u201cdisaster\u201d, calling it \u201cour great, great, great failure\u201d. Housing is consistently the number one issue of concern for the Irish public. In the spring 2023 Eurobarometer poll,<\/a> 61% of people in Ireland cited housing as one of the two most important issues facing the country. Just 10% of people across the EU highlighted housing as one of the two most important issues.<\/p>\n

The facts are startling. Ireland used to have one of the highest rates of home ownership in the EU. But despite near full employment and record economic growth <\/a>in recent years, just 66% of housing is owner-occupied<\/a> now, down from 79% in 1991. Home ownership has collapsed particularly among younger generations and lower-income groups. Today, less than a third of 30-year-olds<\/a> own their home.<\/p>\n

This shift is hardly a surprise when you look at house prices<\/a>, which are now on average almost eight times<\/a> the national average wage. In Dublin, they are more than 10 times the average wage.<\/a> In the years 2012 to 2022, wages increased by 27%<\/a>, compared to a 75% increase in residential property prices, and a 90% increase in rents.<\/p>\n

The average Dublin rent is now \u20ac2,102 a month<\/a>. That is equivalent to the entire monthly take-home pay of a newly qualified teacher<\/a>. Since 2015, rents have increased by 13% across the euro area, but in Ireland they\u2019ve increased by 60%.<\/a> And this is despite a rent cap<\/a> on existing rental tenancies.<\/p>\n

Spiralling rents are directly connected to the fact that most of the new-build housing supply is expensive, investor-fund build-to-rent, backed by government through tax breaks and incentives. In 2022, 58%<\/a> of all newly built homes in greater Dublin were bought or developed by investor funds. Countless people are being locked out of buying a home by the reliance on these global vulture funds. I prefer to call them vampire funds because they seek not to buy and sell, but to extract high rents in perpetuity.<\/p>\n

Griffith Wood,<\/a> for example, is a new Dublin apartment complex of 342 homes built in 2021. The entire development was bought by Greystar,<\/a> a global real-estate investment company that entered the Irish housing market in 2019. A one-bedroom flat in the complex is now advertised to rent<\/a> for \u20ac2,150 a month, while a two-bed is a cool \u20ac3,335.<\/p>\n

If crippling rents were not enough, tenants endure chronic insecurity. Unlike in many other European countries (but similarly to the UK), private landlords can evict tenants who are paying their rent for \u201cno fault\u201d reasons.<\/p>\n

Thirty thousand households<\/a>, or just under one in 10<\/a> of every renting household, were evicted in the past three years alone. A no-fault eviction ban introduced in 2022 lapsed <\/a>in March this year, and more than 15,000 notices<\/a> of termination have been issued so far in 2023. That is more evictions than during the height of the Famine<\/a>, when an average of more than 8,000 households were evicted annually<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Combined with a dire lack of social housing, the current rate of evictions means Ireland has the highest levels of homelessness on record<\/a>. Based on my research<\/a>, I estimate that 23,881 individuals are homeless, almost double the level recorded in officialstatistics. Adding hidden homelessness, a reliable estimate is nearly 75,000 people \u2013 almost six times the official statistic.<\/p>\n

The new evictees aren\u2019t being put out of their homes by immigrants or asylum seekers, but by landlords seeking to raise rents on new tenancies or turn the properties into Airbnbs. There are now 14 times<\/a> as many properties advertised on Airbnb in Ireland as there are advertised to rent long term.<\/p>\n

The current crisis has deep roots. From the 1980s, Irish governments, like Margaret Thatcher\u2019s Britain<\/a>, began to shift away from building council housing. Ireland already had a longstanding policy of supporting tenant purchase via loans, but public housing was sold off on a massive scale and remaining social housing communities were progressively more stigmatised. Two-thirds of social housing<\/a> built in Ireland since the 1930s has been sold by the state into private ownership.<\/p>\n

Local authorities were further undermined during the boom Celtic tiger years of the mid-1990s to 2007, as social housing was outsourced to private developers and private rental schemes. But rather than transforming the housing model after the 2008 crash, the policy adopted to achieve economic \u201crecovery\u201d included pushing up property prices so that the asset value of housing held on banks\u2019 balance sheets would rise again, making banks solvent, and recovering the investments of Celtic tiger developers.<\/p>\n

Successive governments (led mainly by the centre-right Fine Gael party, with, from 2011 to 2016, Ireland\u2019s Labour party), used post-crash austerity<\/a> to completely dismantle the social housing delivery capacity of local authorities. In 2007, local authorities built in the region of 6,000 homes<\/a>; in 2014 they built just 102.<\/p>\n

The state agency set up in 2009 to take over \u201cbad\u201d property loans from the banks meanwhile sold off huge amounts of land and apartments at major discounts to global real-estate funds, and even social housing schemes were developed for them. A US investor last month bought a \u20ac75m \u201cportfolio\u201d<\/a> of 156 apartments, now leased as social housing on a 25-year deal with a Dublin local authority.<\/p>\n

Much of the present crisis is not in fact a result of \u201cfailures\u201d of housing policy, but is actual government policy: promoting the financialisation<\/a> of housing and prioritising the commodity value of housing over the basic need for a home. Many politicians view private renters as little more than \u2013 as the taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, described it in the D\u00e1il<\/a> \u2013 a landlord\u2019s income.<\/p>\n

Attitudes of fiscal conservatism dominate, which restrict investment in public housing even when the money is available. In the most recent budget, a \u20ac12bn surplus <\/a>was put into paying down the national debt and pension funds rather than investing in housing, exacerbating the sense of generational injustice.<\/p>\n

The housing crisis is now a \u201ccatalyst\u201d for anti-immigrant sentiment, an Irish parliamentary committee warned in November<\/a>. \u201cIt creates an impression of resource scarcity and competition for services, which hampers integration and feeds into racist and far-right narratives and an \u2018us and them\u2019 mentality,\u201d their report concluded<\/a>. Last week, in a worrying sign that it is itself playing anti-immigrant politics while failing to prioritise housing, the government announced it had run out of accommodation <\/a>for new asylum seekers, who would be offered tents and sleeping bags instead.<\/p>\n

The question we should be asking is: who benefits when migrants and refugees are scapegoated for anger about housing? Landlords, investor funds and private developers can all sit back and charge higher rents while claiming (falsely) that the problems are down to \u201cscarcity of homes\u201d and \u201csupply and demand\u2019\u201d in the light of a growing population<\/a>. But housing outcomes are not just determined by the market \u2013 the state can also play a central role, as it has done in Austria (in Vienna, 50% of all housing is public housing<\/a>, built for all income groups), and as it did across the UK and Ireland in the past, to ensure there is enough housing, and that social housing needs are met.<\/p>\n

We can provide enough homes for all of us. Ireland has huge numbers of vacant and derelict properties and available land. We have the wealth and finance to provide sufficient housing. We could form a public construction company<\/a> that could transform public housing delivery. It is the self-imposed economic straitjacket of restricted investment that is causing this shortage. Refugees did not cause the housing crisis. The responsibility for scarcity, hoarding and accumulation of property. wealth and land by a tiny elite lies squarely with Irish governments, banks, developers and investor funds.<\/p>\n

Where I see hope is in evidence of a generational shift in attitudes. Opinion polls show a majority in<\/a> favour of inserting a right to a home in the constitution<\/a> and majority (85%) support<\/a> for a decline in house prices. Hope is visible too in the \u201cIreland for all\u201d demonstrations <\/a>that began earlier this year.<\/p>\n

The real danger remains, however, that the far right continues to grow and turn anger about the housing catastrophe away from the actual causes and on to vulnerable refugees, asylum seekers and immigrants, continuing the age-old tactic of divide and conquer. The poor and working people blame each other; while the rich win, again.<\/p>\n