Govt Urged To Commit To 50,000 Social Housing Units

The Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) has called on the government to urgently initiate a major local-authority led programme to generate 50,000 social housing units over the next five years.

Congress has also urged the government to introduce measures to penalise 'land hoarding', speed the planning process and create a new rental model for Ireland.

Launching a campaign aimed at tackling the housing and homeless crisis, Congress President Sheila Nunan said that government must now take the lead on social housing provision, through the local authorities.

Nunan continued: "The housing crisis now defines our society, for all the wrong reasons and in all the wrong ways. Ceding control of the housing market entirely to the private sector has utterly failed. The state must now step in and assume responsibility for social housing provision in order to rebalance the broken housing market and vindicate the citizen's basic right to a home and shelter.

"Congress is proposing that, as a first step, government should declare a Housing Emergency and move with the urgency that an emergency situation demands. It should commit to increasing the social housing stock by no less 10,000 per annum over the next five years."

General Secretary Patricia King said that Congress would seek to build a broad civil society coalition to press for urgent policy change on the issue.

King continued: "The crisis is impacting on the living standards of working people and putting untold pressure on incomes, with 27% of disposable income going on rent in some areas.

"We will meet with local authorities, political groupings and housing campaign groups to build consensus around a platform that will deliver a solution to this crisis and work to ensure that government responds.

"Along with a commitment to social housing provision, the government must also introduce a measures to penalise land hoarding which, under the circumstances, is unconscionable and tantamount to holding Irish society to ransom."

Ms King said that there is enough serviced land in existence to build almost 400,000 homes and said that Congress believed local authorities should be empowered to make Compulsory Purchase Orders (CPOs) of land for housing, at 25% above the agricultural land use value.

She concluded: "The Vacant Site Levy should be increased from 3% to 6% and introduced in January 2018, while holdups in the planning process should also be tackled."

(MH)