Dublin City Council’s housing waiting list contains over 20,000 applicants’ names who might have to wait for more than 40 years to have a place to live. The initial plan (made almost a year ago) stated that by 2021, over 47,000 housing units would have been ready, €200 million would have been allocated to infrastructure costs and at least 15,000 to 20,000 new homes would have been delivered to applicants. However, Dublin City Council’s figures from January show that there are now 18,946 people left on that list. Have a look at how this housing crisis keeps on deteriorating and how this will affect the people and the economy in the future.
How did we get here?
Ireland’s housing crisis is a result of having too many people and not enough homes to accommodate them. This rapidly-growing population is due to a surplus of births over deaths and net migration, two main factors that high-income countries would prefer. Of course, having too many people in a country like Ireland doesn’t mean that there isn’t enough space to house all of them! So what went wrong? People are relying on the State to provide them with houses which is taking too much time to build. In addition, there are inadequate supplies on the market and the developers don’t have enough capital to build these homes.
The economy will be shaken
The Fiscal Advisory Council recently warned about the high risks that the current housing trend will pose to the economy in a few years. The building of a large number of new homes will eventually lead to overheating the economy.The best thing about this situation is that that we can expect greater output and employment opportunities in the construction sector. However, it will also “bid up wages and erode competitiveness”, leaving us in a similar situation as it previously happened in the mid-2000s. We could reap all of these benefits, if only we had a quicker and stronger supply of talents and resources to rein in the potential rises in rent prices.
It is estimated that the situation will worsen
A report states that the number of homeless families in Dublin City has significantly risen between 2014 and 2016, such that one in every 10 households have nowhere to live. According to TASC, this housing crisis will keep on getting worse and the State must quickly establish a plan where home companies can provide “between 10,000 and 30,000 reasonably priced rental units every year”.
Dr. Rory Hearne adds in the TASC report that we should be expecting a “tsunami of homelessness” soon because we are seeing the worst stages of family homelessness in Ireland. Inadequate affordable accommodation is one of the main reasons why the number of homeless families has plummeted up to 289%. He states that “Six ‘trophy” houses on one road in Dublin 4 were sold for between €3 and €4 million each in 2016. Meanwhile, 198,358 homes lie empty in Ireland. In Cork, there are 269 people homeless, and 21,287 vacant units and in Dublin, 3,247 people homeless and 35,293 vacant homes”.
What do the builders have to say about the slow building process?
Kenny Brendan claims, “It’s not that nothing is being built in the city, but they’ve either been small or they’ve been student complexes. The student apartments are flying along in contrast with the general residential, but student housing doesn’t qualify for Part V.” Brendan Kenny remains positive and is hopeful that more and more units will be ready by the end of this year.
However, what is happening, in reality, seems to contradict this. Many builders, including Brendan the builder, are currently focused on working on the less important building projects, such as building blocks and offices. The Developer Cairn Homes has recently that “there is office space for 60,000 people under construction in Dublin at the moment”. If builders and the State do not quickly act and rethink about building houses instead of offices, we can only expect this housing crisis to worsen within a few years.
Applicants are left to survive in dire conditions
Jennifer O’Regan is one of those applicants who is still waiting for accommodation from the local authorities. She and her 5 children live and sleep in her car because the homeless services are taking too much time to attend to her needs. She isn’t looking for the keys of a house, just for a temporary accommodation but the ones in charge claim that she cannot be allocated one yet.
Housing is a right, not a privilege
A giant march was held by many campaigners on May Day in central Dublin to decry the inefficiency of the government’s housing plans. One of the speakers at the rally, McVerry openly criticized how the current strategies of the government are not working and it is high time to take “more radical measures”. This march was meant to be a wake-up call for the local authorities to realize the impact of the housing crisis on individuals and the economy. However, we wonder how much more time will it take for them to put their plans into action.
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