The Green Party and Housing
I return again, like a dog to a buried bone, to the subject of the Grey Party (sorry Green Party). I took the opportunity, recently, of republishing their 2007 manifesto lest it be forgotten, and among its declarations was the Grey Party’s determination to:
‘Ensure the delivery of 10,000 social and affordable housing units a year until the housing waiting lists are cleared.’
Now there seems little prospect of the Greys delivering on this promise, which, it seems to me, was included in their manifesto to placate the party’s left-wing members, many of whom have anyway become disillusioned with the performance of the party in power, and so may safely be dismissed as irrelevant now. In fact, I have been assured that the number of new members joining the party is greater than the numbers leaving, which suggests that a lot of people have joined the party who are happy with the Grey Party’s coalition with Fianna Fáil The Corruption Party - serious matter for consideration there, if you happen to be a member too.
But to return to the housing issue. I would like to suggest to the Grey Party (sorry, Green Party) that this particular promise can be delivered almost instantly, and that, in fact the housing waiting list could probably be completely cleared by about 2011 (say mid-August 2011), and that in fact Ireland could, by that date, be the best housed nation in the world.
It seems that we have in excess of 320,000 ’surplus housing units’ in this country, and the majority of these will shortly pass into public ownership through NAMA. Now, let us suppose that 50% of these ‘housing units’ are pure shit - like the ones build down the road from where I live. You know the kind of thing: a structural steel frame, two slabs of cladding with stuffing between, a few oul’ doors and windows and provision for a fast-food outlet on the ground floor. So, we’re left with 180,000 useable ’surplus housing units’. Now there are various estimates for the number of people on the waiting list. The Irish Council for Social Housing records that in 2008 there were 56,249 households in need of social housing. This represented an increase of 28% on 2005. If we extrapolate an even bigger increase for the years since then (reposessions etc), say, 35%, we’re left with just under 80,000 housholds in need of social housing.
Now, these 80,000 households could be accomodated twice over in the surplus of good housing units. In fact, each houshold could be given a primary house and a holiday home! But setting aside all frivolity, NAMA represents a golden opportunity for the Greys to shine.
Of course, as a taxi-driver recently said to me on my way to the airport to flee the country (if only on a temporary basis), ‘Decent hardworking people will suffer if you do that.’ What he meant was that (a) such a move would depress the market even further, (b) people in negative equity would find themselves living next to people who hadn’t paid for their houses at all and (c) people in ‘decent’ estates would find themselves living next to people who are ‘not the right sort’.
Now, I’m not sure which of these arguments is preventing the Grey party from acting on my proposal. I suppose they have to bear in mind that the kind of people who vote Grey (sorry, green) tend to be the kind of people who are likely to be in negative equity now. I doubt, to be fair, that the snobbery argument would wash with them. I’m certain though, that their FF comrades would exhibit pyro-technic levels of anger at the idea of depressing the market.
However, the first principle of the present economic situation is that the housing market is fucked - and anyway was unsustainable throughout the Celtic Tiger period. Probably for 20 years. Government may well decide to give relief of some kind to people who are at the pin of their collar to pay their mortgages, but the negative equity business is something people will have to live with. There will be very little buying and selling of houses in Ireland for some time, and virtually no house-building - as I said earlier, we have 320,000 extra houses already - though there should be a tidy business in demolition of the cladding/stuffing/cladding ‘units’.
So, an opportunity exists for a bold move that would put Ireland at the forefront of something other than bankruptcy statistics. We could wipe out our social housing needs in one year. We could have the best-housed population in the world and the existence of a well-housed population would have multiplier effects on the economy.
If the Greys are unwilling to take the proposal on board I’d like to suggest that the next government - Left-led, I hope - might give it some serious thought. It would be some small compensation for the mortgaging of our children’s future represented by the saving of the banks.
Irish Council for Social Housing
For an earlier discussion of this idea see The Irish Left Review here.
Photo of property developer Johnny Owens doing odd jobs around his practically deserted housing estate in Mullingar, Ireland taken from a recent LA Times article on Ireland and how its getting along with austerity, which thankfully gives considerable space to economist Michael Burke.
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