Hand-wringers on one team, ‘homelessness deniers’ on the other, and not a civil word in between

Housing debate needs less ‘knee-jerk’ rhetoric

THERE’S this much to be said for Conor Skehan at least: he has a certain chutzpah. By now the chairman of the Housing Agency has annoyed just about everybody connected to the housing problem, together with a great many people who aren’t connected to it at all. And at a time when public figures are expected to grovel and resign over any – and every – transgression, damn me if he isn’t sticking to his guns.

Mr Skehan appeared before the Oireachtas housing committee on Wednesday to be taken to task over his remarks last month that some people were ‘gaming the system’ by declaring themselves homeless to jump the queue for housing – remarks that he’s stubbornly refusing to take back.

This is a man who’s keeping his head while all around are calling for it on a platter. All the same, at the committee he seemed annoyed by all the criticism and was inclined to take a hectoring tone, which didn’t help. ‘I do not deal in views,’ he said. ‘I’m here to report facts. These are facts. These are facts. These are facts as reported by extremely reputable commentators on this issue who are saying exactly the same thing, word for word. Are we clear about that? Are we clear about that?’

In response, senator Victor Boyhan said he found the comments ‘offensive’, while People Before Profit TD Mick Barry said he was ‘adding fuel to the fire of prejudice against those in a difficult position’.

One expects a little hyperbole from public figures but Mr Barry’s accusation is an interesting one, in that it seems to support the notion that the best way to get rid of prejudice is to suppress the exchange of ideas.

Whatever you think of Mr Skehan (chutzpah aside), you must allow that he has some expertise on the subject of housing, having been chairman of the Housing Agency for five years. He’s also an architect and planner and former head of the environment department at Dublin Institute of Technology.

And whatever you think of him, if you could cool your jets for a second you might also allow that what he said was not that immoderate. The problem with homelessness is that it is an emotive subject and where emotion is engaged, reason very often is not. In the ears of some of his auditors, Mr Skehan’s ‘some people may be gaming the housing allocation system’ was translated as: ‘All homeless people are scumbags.’

But, of course, people are gaming the system. There are people who will game every system, high up and low down in every society the world over. There are chancers among captains of industry and there are chancers among people on housing waiting lists. It’s not unreasonable to believe this, so it can’t be immoderate to state it.

It’s also reasonable and a sign of good faith to believe that chancers are in the minority. Declaring that everyone is gaming the system marks you out as an idiot but declaring that no one is gaming the system does the same.

Mr Skehan is in the dock for providing only anecdotal evidence to back up his claim. He was lamentably unscientific about the whole thing. But there is quite a bit of evidence that the housing allocation scheme is being taken advantage of.

In 2015 a ministerial direction prioritised self-declared homelessness above other types of housing need. A year later the Housing Agency’s own review recommended it be discontinued. It was successful in housing homeless families but it came at a cost to households who’d been on waiting lists for years, and it ‘could create a potential incentive for households… to present as homeless’.

Are we expected to believe that nobody took the difficult decision to leave their accommodation and become homeless to give themselves an advantage in getting a home for their family? A deeply flawed new system actually encouraged families to ‘game the system’.

Then there are the numbers refusing offers of housing. It was reported last autumn that more than one in four offers of social housing were turned down in 2016 in Dublin city. Reports in May said 3,000 offers were refused nationally in two years. That’s 3,000 instances where people we regard as desperate turned out to be not as desperate as all that.

Many of the grounds for refusal were deemed reasonable by the local authorities – but most were not. A woman in Cork became briefly, namelessly, famous for refusing accommodation because the harbour view made her seasick. Most often, applicants refuse accommodation because of where it is. This can be reasonable grounds – where mobility is limited for instance – but where it isn’t, it’s exactly the sort of thing that will incense those private homeowners who took out a mortgage for a semi in Kinnegad because it was all they could afford.

Undoubtedly the system is open to abuse, as systems tend to be. However, as a society we agree to treat with decency those who behave honourably and those who behave dishonourably alike. It’s what you do. That’s not the same as believing nobody behaves dishonourably.

Now to the so-called ‘homelessness industry’, whacking at the piñata of State and charitable funding. Mr Skehan highlighted this too, in October, saying: ‘The four biggest charities in Dublin have well over 900 employees with a payroll running to €80m or €90m.’

Mr Skehan himself, the record should show, is not paid. But by way of example, staff costs at Focus Ireland ran to more than €14m in 2016, with the chief executive paid €115,000 plus €5,000 worth of medical insurance. Similarly, the Dublin city council official with responsibility for housing was paid €126,777 in 2017.

A review published in 2016 by Mazars found there were more than 75 State-funded organisations working in the field, getting (in 2014) close to €100m a year from the Exchequer alone. In a conclusion that surely should have gone without saying, Mazars questioned the efficiency of this.

It might be useful if we could look dispassionately at these matters without people shrieking ‘Fascist!’ You’re allowed to say – in fact you’re encouraged to say – homelessness is ‘a complex problem’ but you’re not encouraged to discuss the ways in which it is complex.

We must preserve the duality of the hollow-eyed poor on one side, flanked by heroic charity workers, and the right-wing Establishment callously ignoring the problem on the other. Hand-wringers on one team, ‘homelessness deniers’ on the other and not a civil or intelligent or constructive word spoken in between.