Today Catherine Murphy, Co-leader of the Social Democrats and TD for Kildare North, launched the party’s detailed housing policy document entitled Unlocking Affordable Housing.
Speaking in advance of the launch Murphy – the long-time proponent of sustainable, responsible and coordinated development, and integrated land-use and transport planning – stated:
The current housing crisis did not come about by accident; it is the product of decades of inaction, poor to non-existent planning policy and disastrous over-reliance on private interests to produce housing for us.
She continued
We have to stop hoping for the best and move to an approach where we actively drive housing delivery to create vibrant, diverse and inclusive communities where people have access to the sort of housing they need, when they need it and at an affordable price.
Unlocking Affordable Housing includes proposals to consolidate housing policy under a single new government department and a new agency called Housing Ireland. In relation to this aspect of her party’s proposals, Murphy stated:
Housing policy is dispersed across a range of government departments at present and this is acting as a roadblock to coordinated housing delivery. Consolidating those functions under a single department and agency will make housing production more efficient and ensure affordability and supply into the future.
When asked how the party intends to address the present homelessness crisis and boost delivery of social housing, Murphy stated:
The presence of homelessness in a developed nation such as Ireland is simply unacceptable at the best of times, but the extent of our current homelessness crisis is truly shameful. We have to act now to address the needs of those at risk of homelessness and those presently experiencing homelessness, and we also need to adopt the Housing First policy approach to stamping out homelessness and the need to sleep rough into the future.
ENDS
Information Note on Unlocking Affordable Housing
Introduction
Tackling Ireland’s housing crisis is one of the Social Democrats’ highest priorities. We must address pressing short term housing need and institute reforms to bring about a long-term, sustainable approach to housing provision. It is our aim to: transform Ireland’s housing policy; harness the State’s vital co-ordinating role; and, build vibrant, sustainable, mixed-tenure communities so that every person and every family can access the right type of housing, in the right location at the right time of life. Critical to this is ensuring that all types of housing are affordable.
Short to medium term solutions
Coordination and Community Focus
Housing policy is spread across too many departments and state agencies to be coherent and effective. We propose to:
Social Housing
There are 140,000 people on local authority housing waiting lists; we aim to reduce this figure by 10,000 per annum, using the following measures to drive and fund this initiative:
Private Rental Sector Reform
No national policy strategy has ever been put in place for the private rented sector, we aim to change by developing a national rental sector strategy that would:
Private Housing
Homelessness
The profile of those who have become homeless has changed in recent years. Increases in numbers of homeless individuals and families and those at imminent risk of homelessness have been directly fuelled by the housing crisis. Services have also been cut or removed entirely for many experiencing problems more traditionally associated with homelessness.
The measures outlined in the above sections, if implemented, would drastically reduce the numbers of people who present as homeless, but this is not a solution by itself. We endorse the Housing First approach to tackling the present homelessness crisis and addressing the future needs of those at risk of homelessness and those experiencing homelessness.
[1] This approach is modelled on the 1991 UN Principles for Older Persons