A whole generation is being barred from owning their own homes despite being unable to afford the rents, say TD Social Democrats

Thousands of people took to the streets on Saturday to express their outrage at Ireland’s housing crisis.

We have over 11,000 people living in emergency accommodation, including over 3,400 children.

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And a new Eurostat report has shown that Dublin is now more expensive than Paris or Berlin for tenants.

With the cost of buying homes also back to Celtic Tiger levels, a whole generation is suffering because of our housing shambles.

The good news, according to Cian O’Callaghan, Lodging spokesperson for the social democratsis that there are solutions.

Here he explains how we can solve the problems that affect young millennials.

ACROSS Ireland, a generation in their twenties and thirties are waking up this morning in the childhood bedrooms of the family homes they grew up in.

Deprived of access to property or unable to pay exorbitant rents, they must live indefinitely with their parents, devoid of any hope of one day having a place of their own.

This lack of independence can affect mental health, lower self-esteem and negatively impact family relationships, especially when partners and young children are involved in such living conditions.

Last year, the percentage of adult children aged 25-34 living with their parents was 41%, a significant jump from 33.5% in 2020.

It’s not just those struggling to buy a home who are affected by the failure of the government’s housing plan. Earlier this week, a report from Daft revealed the full extent of the rental disaster in Ireland.

The latest figures show the average searched rent for a house nationwide between July and September was a record 14.1% higher than the same period last year.

The average monthly rent for a residential property nationwide was €1,688, an increase of 4.3% from the previous quarter and the largest quarterly increase recorded by the property listings website since 2005.

Tanaiste Leo Varadkar recent offhand comment that “the grass looks greener” for Irish emigrants looking to rent abroad does not stand up to scrutiny.

CAPITAL RENTS

According to Eurostat, Dublin is the most expensive capital in the EU for rental, ahead of Paris, Rome and Berlin.

Property prices and rents are at an all time high and this year has seen a record number of people living in emergency homeless accommodation.

Yet, oddly, the Minister of Housing Darragh O’Brien continues to deny that we are in the midst of a housing emergency and insists that the government plan work.

The Taoiseach and Minister are adamant that housing starts are on the rise. In fact, they are down 14% from last year.

They also claim that there will be 4 billion euros in capital expenditure on housing in 2022. Incredibly, in the midst of our worst housing crisis, they are almost 500 million euros behind their spending target for the first nine months of this year.

The government boasts that 28,000 homes will be delivered by the end of 2022. However, there is consensus that at least 40,000 new homes are needed every year.

Of the 9,000 social housing units in direct construction promised for 2022, only 1,765 were completed in the first six months of the year. Not a single social house was built by any of Dublin’s four local authorities during the same period. But there is absolutely no shortage of solutions to the housing crisis.

VACANT HOMES

There are several things the government could do immediately to improve the supply of affordable housing.

There were 35,000 vacant rental units on census night – many of which are empty as they are used as short-term rentals.

Regulation of platforms such as Airbnb could see many of these properties return to the long-term rental market.

Raising the vacancy tax to an effective level could quickly bring many of the 160,000 empty homes back into service. The state should commit to building 20,000 public housing units – a mix of rent-to-cost, social-purchase and affordable – every year.

A ban on no-fault evictions would help reduce homelessness and bring us closer to most European countries.

Also, we should end developer subsidies and instead use that money to build affordable homes to buy and rent.

Many participants at Saturday’s Raise The Roof rally in Dublin expressed anger and frustration at the government’s failure to tackle the housing crisis.

They deserve solutions, not more spin.

• Cian O’Callaghan TD is housing spokesperson for the Social Democrats

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