One of the striking features of the Marriage Equality Referendum in Ireland and the recent UK General Election was the mobilisation of the “young vote”, where a collective sense of purpose seized the imagination of younger voters traditionally less engaged in politics and inclined to abstain from the electoral process.
A question that looms in Ireland’s political consciousness is whether the younger generation in Irish society still clings to the optimistic belief that they can achieve more and be better off than their parents’ generation. A growing realisation that they will be worse off is potentially the raw material for transformative change in political and economic attitudes and aspirations.
The next focus of generational discontent in Ireland is likely to be home ownership. Are we witnessing the first generation of post-independence Irish citizens who will face major difficulty in becoming property owners in their own right?
Economic and demographic forces seem to be driving up the cost of homes inexorably, widening the gap between the earnings potential of young people and their capacity to acquire property. The Celtic Tiger property bubble was accompanied by a credit bubble which appeared to preserve the prospect of home ownership from the great majority.
But now we have Celtic Tiger property prices and hugely restricted access to credit. This combination appears to challenge any sense of confidence or hope that many people can aspire to own their own homes in their earning years.
The housing crisis is not merely one of short-term “homelessness”; demand for homes radically exceeds our economy’s capacity to deliver those homes as things stand. This, in turn, demands a radically new approach from government. Simon Coveney’s palliative measures, including localised rent control, and tinkering at the edges of planning law, while necessary, are by no means sufficient. The immediate focus of the “housing crisis” was and is the political hot potato of homelessness. But the longer term issue of “hopelessness” for the coming generation needs to be addressed as well.
One disastrous coincidence was the well-intentioned but foolish decision by Simon Coveney’s department to outlaw bed-sits as part of a drive to improve housing standards. Across Dublin, the effect was to close between 8,000 and 12,000 homes available to those at the very bottom rung of the housing ladder.
The idea that it should be illegal to dwell in a home which shared bathroom or kitchen accommodation seems plausible until you remember that the more recent pattern of house-sharing and flat-sharing also involves tenants using shared kitchen and bathroom facilities.
The irony is that political pressure for abolition of bed-sits was driven in good faith by Threshold which denied that banning bedsits would increase homelessness. They were, alas, wrong.
We need a revolution in national policy on home-building if we are not to have a crisis of home ownership. It is true that between 1930 and 1970 huge social housing projects were undertaken by the Irish State in and around our cities. This suggests that it is well within our political and economic capacity to build a great number of homes.
Large scale social housing projects of the past were not, however, devoid of consequence as regards the social fabric of our society. Arguably Limerick was an example of a huge imbalance in one local authority area between social and private housing. The consequences for the social wellbeing of Limerick were very real.
It seems to me that demand for housing in our major cities, particularly Dublin, requires an entirely new approach. We need urban renewal agencies which can bring home building back into the centres of our cities rather than spreading Dublin’s housing demand across most of east Leinster. It isn’t enough for Dublin City Council or any other urban local authorities to devise development plans passively allowing for six, eight or ten storey apartment buildings or providing special zoning for major housing projects.
We need something like the Wide Street Commissioners with powers of compulsory acquisition, urban planning, granting building leases, and streetscape design to drive regeneration with a very significant home ownership component. We also need to restore the spirit of Part V of the Planning Act which required the integration of social and affordable housing in all housing developments so as to prevent ghettoization and geographic inequality.
Policies which merely “hope” that private sector developers can assemble urban sites and thereafter build homes to satisfy future market demand simply don’t work and can’t work in an urban environment. A much more hands on approach is needed.
I am not suggesting that the lumbering bureaucracies that we already have in the form of city and county councils should now become development agencies. That course, would, in all probability, be disastrous. I have no faith in the capacity of Dublin City Council or its elected members to shape or regenerate our city effectively or in a timely fashion and I do not believe that its structure or culture would justify giving it the resources to transform the city.
I have in mind an agency or commission which would look at entire areas and neighbourhoods and smaller in-fill sites with a view to regeneration.
To take a simple example, on my commute there are stretches of Clanbrassil Street with decaying single storey and two storey shops. The same applies to vast swathes of the north inner city. They have been in this condition for many years. Perhaps some developer is attempting like a Monopoly player to quietly assemble a large scale development site there by a process of individual acquisition. Perhaps not. But that process, if it is happening, takes decades. Strangely, it was road-widening that drove much of the limited regeneration that has happened in those areas.
The Constitution, by the way, poses no obstacle at all to the establishment of such an agency with CPO powers and the power to grant building leases. It can be self-financing.
Dereliction and obsolescence in our cities is not just visual; it is a social injustice which spawns many other problems. It represents both harm and missed opportunity at the same time.
Half-hearted measures such as derelict sites legislation and proposals for site-value taxes and special development zones will not address these issues. The chemistry of urban regeneration requires more powerful catalysts to bring change on a scale and in a time frame that matches our urgent needs.
As Simon Coveney turns his gaze to foreign affairs, Eoghan Murphy is taking on a poison chalice unless there is fresh thinking. The social and political consequences of handing home ownership to REITS and vulture funds are very great; we are approaching a tipping point.