Ireland’s housing crisis is not a simple case of heroes v villains

Housing Agency chief Conor Skehan is paying the price for living in a culture that does not like hearing awkward truths, writes Eilis O’Hanlon

ASK anyone who’s faced the frustration of looking for social housing whether everyone on the list alongside them is equally deserving of help, or whether some people are just better than others at getting what they want, and most would privately admit the uncomfortable truth.

When anyone whose job it is to provide social housing says the same thing, all hell breaks loose.

That’s what Conor Skehan discovered. He’s been chair of the Housing Agency for the past five years, which, one might naively imagine, would have given him a certain authority to speak on the matter. Thinking he was retiring at the end of 2017, he gave a newspaper interview in which he claimed that some families were “gaming the system” by deliberately making themselves homeless in order to jump the queue, adding that the Government may have “unwittingly created a problem by prioritising self-declared homelessness above all other types of housing need”. He wasn’t criticising people who want a house, but the unintended consequence of the policy itself, which resulted in the number of families in emergency accommodation skyrocketing as soon as it was decreed in January 2015 that 50pc of available housing should go to the homeless.

The scheme was subsequently discontinued everywhere but Dublin, suggesting that it had indeed not worked out as planned.

Skehan made that argument in more colourful language than expected, using a phrase which his critics swiftly leapt on to discredit him; but he’s not the first to make similar observations. Councillors in Dublin are on the record as knowing families who’ve done exactly what the Housing Agency chief alleged, and some elected representatives are even recorded in minutes saying that families themselves openly admit it.

Had his retirement gone ahead as planned, Conor Skehan’s remarks would have created a small stir, then been forgotten, but the Government couldn’t find a replacement, so, by the time the interview appeared in print, he’d agreed to stay on another year. There was immediate condemnation and rebuttal from politicians, charities and homelessness campaigners.

Dublin City Council passed a motion calling on Housing Minister Eoghan Murphy to fire him.

Skehan appeared midweek before the Oireachtas housing committee to answer for his crimes against the people. He defended himself robustly, insisting that he had only raised the possibility that the practice he described may be happening — but he also made a couple of factual slip-ups when discussing particular cases, prompting another round of social media outrage, in which he was accused of everything from lying about the housing crisis to being Joseph Goebbels, because, of course, dragging the Nazis into every row always helps raise the tone.

Skehan had the misfortune to face the Oireachtas committee in the same week as headlines about landlords forcibly evicting tenants in Dublin, some of whom have since alleged assault, and in which Liveline was highlighting the sad case of a 91-year-old man having to leave his home in Tramore despite living there for decades. There are so many cartoon villains on hand when it comes to the housing crisis around the country that it’s easy to paint everyone who needs a house as a saint, but that’s not true either.

There are people working the system, or lying about their circumstances to bump themselves up the queue. People do turn down houses for what seem on the outside to be trivial reasons.

Sometimes they just don’t want to move away from areas where they grew up or currently live. That’s understandable. But it’s also what people who pay their own rent or mortgage are forced to do every day. They live where they can afford to live. They live in houses that might be smaller or shabbier than they’d ideally like, because that’s as far as their budget will stretch, and there’s no help for them from the council.

People aren’t commuting large distances every day from choice but from necessity. Why don’t they just buy a nice pied-a-terre in Blackrock and get the Dart into work? Oh, that’s right, it’s because they can’t afford South Dublin prices.

Having to pay your own way quickly forces you to be realistic. Desperation can breed a certain ingratitude in people seeking help, because they’ve been led to believe that they have a right to a house, and they do, within limits.

What they don’t have is the right to this or that particular house, with all the boxes ticked, because no one has that right. No one ticks all their boxes when buying a house, unless they’re rich enough to have the pick of the best. But again, say any of this and you’re immediately accused of being a monster. Suddenly, you’re the one chucking vulnerable families with young children out on to the street.

Conor Skehan was criticised for not backing up his assertions with irrefutable evidence when he appeared before the committee, but it wouldn’t be right to point the finger at individuals and put them in the stocks of public opinion. People have a right to privacy. Even those “gaming the system” are not doing anything illegal. Nor is anyone in emergency accommodation basking in the lap of luxury.

Documents released this week show that the Dublin Region Homeless Executive received more than 300 complaints last year, including evidence of infestations, fire hazards, damp conditions, all leading to poor mental health outcomes.

At the same time, more than two-thirds of the complaints came from those providing accommodation, often concerning drug use and drug dealing, sometimes in places housing children, and violence. Nothing is black and white, but it’s curious that the same demand for evidence is never made of those simplifying the problem from the other side by always blaming “the system”, as if it was some wicked, monolithic institution rather than a network of people trying to do their best in trying circumstances.

This narrative of easy solutions to difficult problems, in which you find the villains and then scream at them until they submit, is becoming the dominant narrative of modern political discourse.

Everything gets reduced to simple binary choices. Conor Skehan was accused of blaming desperate people rather than a broken system. He wasn’t, but, even if he was, it ought to be possible to admit that ordinary people do sometimes behave in selfish, less than admirable ways, and that this disadvantages others who play by the rules, without being thrown to the wolves. The most telling moments at last week’s hearing was when Skehan was accused of hurting people’s feelings. The truth does often hurt.

We say we want people in public life to tell the truth, but then pillory them when they give their own versions of it. Conor Skehan has even been attacked for stating that “every country in Europe has equivalent issues in terms of affordability (of housing), in terms of homelessness”. He’s supposed to buy instead into the hysterical myth that everything in Ireland is so much worse than anywhere else, because our system and our politicians are uniquely untrustworthy and heartless. It’s childish stuff.

Skehan should be commended for not backing down. Many others in his position would have folded under the pressure, and they shouldn’t even be condemned for that. Telling the truth can be more trouble than it’s worth. Just parrot the slogans demanded by the baying mob, and all will be well again.

Nothing will get done, nothing will change, and we’ll be left with political and moral pygmies who just murmur platitudes for an easy life; but everyone involved will feel so much better about themselves, and that, after all, is what it’s about.

‘We say we want people in public life to speak out, then pillory them when they do’