Refreshing insights on housing crisis welcome

HOUSING policy is failing alarmingly and no amount of press conferences called by Eoghan Murphy can disguise the fact. The new Community Foundation for Ireland report has some refreshing insights that not only highlight the scale of the problem, but also identify how it might be addressed. Among other things, it suggests schemes that enable tenants in social housing to purchase their home from a local authority should be suspended.

Between 1990 and 2016, 43pc of the 82,869 council houses built were sold to tenants. Not only that, but they were sold at a discount of up to 60pc.

When you consider there are 90,000 people waiting on the State’s housing list, and roughly 3,500 social housing units are being delivered, it is patently absurd to keep selling them off. Currently, 66pc of all council housing is now privately owned. They were bought through the tenant purchase scheme, in place since the 1930s.

While the object of home ownership may have been achieved, the scheme has contributed massively to a chronic shortage of council houses. The report recommends a “radical restructuring of funding of council housing” and warns that funding housing through central Government renders it more expensive. Prof Michelle Norris and Dr Aideen Hayden, who wrote the study, suggest the European model of funding through loans to local councils over a longer period of time would be more effective and affordable. They have given much room for thought.