Governments ‘rejecting human rights’ by failing to build homes for families
GOVERNMENTS are walking away from their responsibilities to provide homes for low and middle-income families, the UN Special Rapporteur on housing has said.
Leilani Farha said vulture funds and private equity had snapped up Nama properties and loans to generate huge returns at the expense of families, and that over time cities could become “playgrounds of the rich” as low-income workers were forced out in search of affordable homes.
“The world is at a critical moment… as housing is seen as a profit-making tool for the wealthy,” she told a housing conference. “In 2018, residential real estate is big business, valued at $163tn, three times global GDP. Housing is seen as a place to park excess capital.
“Private equity firms are circling the world looking for cheap debt… the debt Nama has been mandated to sell off. They’re looking at under-privileged neighbourhoods with under-valued land. Governments are divesting themselves from housing. It’s a rejection of their commitment to human rights and access to housing.”
Ms Farha was at the European Workshop on Housing, organised by DIT and the Residential Tenancies Board, where speakers from the UK, Spain and Germany outlined housing challenges.
The conference heard that in the 1960s and 1970s, governments played a key role in providing homes for low and middle-income families but that this function had effectively been outsourced to the private sector, aided by tax breaks.
Ms Farha said governments internationally had “abandoned” their housing role, and were “too closely aligned” to private sector providers.
“If this kind of activity is allowed to grow, what is the future for low-income households?” she asked. “Where will they live? Will they be forced out of the cities?”
Teachers, firefighters, coffee shop workers and binmen were being forced to live in areas far removed from employment, and if this continued cities would become “the playgrounds of the wealthy”.
She added that rent caps and tenant rights had “no effect” if there was no housing stocks. While some cities had taken action – Vancouver and Paris had a vacant homes tax, and Singapore a foreign investor tax – housing, “as a place of warmth and security, had lost its currency”, she added.
“We need a seismic shift,” she said. “What can we do? Think twice about allowing governments to leave housing to unregulated private markets. Housing is not a commodity, it is a human right.”