Читать книгу Home - Eoin Ó Broin - Страница 12

Overture

Inadequate Language

Every day our attention is drawn to housing. Homelessness has reached record highs. Thousands of children are spending years living in unsuitable and overcrowded emergency accommodation. Tens of thousands of people are unable to access appropriate, secure and affordable housing. Rents and house prices continue to rise while an entire generation of young people are locked out of the private market. Social housing delivery is glacial, waiting lists are too long and rent subsidy dependence is growing. The private sector is building too few homes at the wrong price. Accidental landlords are leaving the market and are being replaced by vulture funds.

Increasing numbers of people are affected by and concerned with the failures of our housing system. In newspapers, television shows, casual conversations or arguments in pubs and parliaments, housing is the topic of the moment. But how adequate is the language we are using to describe what is happening around us?

We talk of ‘market failure’ as if the provision of housing operated inside some kind of private sector bubble free from State intervention. The word ‘failure’ suggests either a lack of success or a problem caused by the omission of some required action that never took place.

We use the word ‘broken’ suggesting that our housing system once worked but has at some point in its development fragmented into pieces. The word describes something that was badly designed or poorly implemented. But also something that with the right intervention could be put back together again.

More and more we talk of ‘crisis’ as instability, trauma and hardship increasingly come to describe people’s experiences of trying to access secure and affordable accommodation. For some, ‘crisis’ also speaks of a crucial or decisive turning point, a sudden change of course or, in drama, a high point immediately preceding the resolution of a conflict. For others, ‘crisis’ is the inevitable outworking of the cycles of the market economy as boom turns to bust, only to repeat itself endlessly.

In response, reformers ponder how best to ameliorate, but not eradicate, the worst impacts of this unavoidable sequence of events while revolutionaries agitate for some imagined rupture and new beginning.

Some prefer the word ‘emergency’ both because it speaks to the immediate risks facing so many people while at the same time demanding urgent attention and greater intervention to get the ‘crisis’ under control. But ‘emergency’ also sounds like an accident that requires you to be rushed to your local hospital. These ‘emergency’ departments never go away, they just see different people on different days with different ‘emergencies’ without end.

Others talk of ‘scandal’, ‘disaster’ or ‘catastrophe’. The first suggests something that offends or causes reputational damage, presumably of those responsible. The second and third imply an unforeseen event, something natural possibly, maybe even on a greater scale than originally imagined.

For me none of these words work. They fail to fully grasp what is going on around us. Housing is not a purely ‘market’ activity and the State, past and present, is intimately involved in every aspect of its financing, building, pricing and allocation.

And surely ‘market failure’ is a tautology. Allowing the market too much of a role in the provision of housing is always destined to fail. History, if nothing else, teaches us that.

Indeed, talking about ‘market failure’ suggests that it has an opposite called ‘market success’. Such a thing may exist for the few, but it definitely does not exist for the many.

Housing is a system involving both State and market. There are also non-governmental, academic and media agents whose role is important. And crucially there are real people not just living in, or seeking to live in, but financing, planning, building, pricing, allocating and paying for the places they come to call home.

Our housing system never worked properly. It was never in a fixed or whole state only to be broken and fragmented somewhere along the way.

It certainly is in crisis but whether this is a key moment in the creation of something better is not yet clear. And are we really consigned to the Hobson’s choice of an inadequate amelioration or an impossible revolution?

For tens of thousands of families and individuals the inability to access secure and affordable accommodation certainly is an emergency demanding urgent action but was this really an accident, the result of a bad fall or clumsily decision?

And of course what is going on in housing today is a scandal but I wonder if those responsible are really suffering any repetitional damage. Unfortunately, too many people think of the hardship they see around them as the result of some natural disaster or human catastrophe, a localised problem rather than a system failure.

Each of these words describe a piece of our housing problem but none of them quite get to the root of the meaning of what we are living through. This is not just about semantics. Words matter. How we describe what we see in our society is in effect how we diagnose the problem we want to solve. Bad diagnosis can lead to bad treatment with the patient never recovering.

The word I would choose to describe our housing system is dysfunctional. The Greek origin of the word connotes something ‘bad’, ‘abnormal’ or ‘difficult’. The Latin root speaks to a ‘lack’ of something. In more recent times the word means an abnormality or impairment in an organ or system. But it has also come to describe the disruption of normal social relations.

This gets to the very heart of the matter. Housing is not just a physical thing, the bricks and mortar, timber and steel within which we live. It is a relationship between the providers and the occupiers, between the State and the market, between people who create homes for families who in turn create communities.

A functioning housing system is one in which all people have access to safe, secure and affordable accommodation to meet their needs. It is a system in which everyone has a place they can call home.

Of course, our current housing system functions for some, those who have access to a home. Nor is there any doubt that there are those who benefit from the dysfunction, whose profit is dependent on the system being perpetually bad, abnormal and difficult. But for many, indeed globally for the majority, accessing safe, secure and affordable accommodation is uncertain and is certainly a struggle.

Today in Ireland, and across much of the world, our housing system is completely dysfunctional. It is bad, abnormal and difficult. More importantly these negative experiences for millions of people are the result of abnormal and impaired relationships between the key players in the system. And these are damaging wider social relationships, creating hardship, insecurity, fear and anger.

If you believe, as I do, that good-quality, safe, secure, appropriate and affordable accommodation should be for the many not just the few then understanding the way in which these relationships have become abnormal and impaired during the course of the modern history of housing provision is crucial if solutions are to be found.

Real People

Of course words, no matter how descriptive or evocative, cannot fully capture the lived reality of housing stress facing tens of thousands of families and individuals. Every single day, ever growing numbers of people find accessing secure and affordable accommodation difficult if not impossible.

This book is motivated by their stories and is written in an attempt to help solve the problems they face.

Una and Sean

Una is a full-time mother. Her partner Sean has a badly paid job. They used to live in private rented accommodation with their five children until the landlord raised the rent to an impossible level. In the two years before receiving their Notice to Quit rents had increased 20 percent.

They presented to the Council’s homeless desk. With only nine years on the housing list they still had two years to go before an allocation. All the desk clerk could offer them was hotel accommodation on the other side of the city.

Every morning they would leave the hotel at 6.30am and take the two-hour bus journey to drop the kids to school. Each starting at a different time. Sean would head off to work while Una would wander the streets waiting for collection time, staggered from 2.30 to 4.30pm.

Then they would make the long bus journey back to the hotel, tired and cranky, stuck in rush hour traffic.

The hotel room was clean but there was no place to cook or to store their stuff. Homework was a nightmare with all five children trying to read and write sprawled out on the large double bed. Health and safety meant the children couldn’t leave the room unattended. It was suffocating.

And then there were the arguments. The children’s behaviour started to change. Una’s relationship with Sean was under real strain. There was no advice, no help, nowhere to turn to. Sure they could have talked to friends or family but the shame of not being able to provide for their children forced them to put a brave face on their daily struggles.

Looking back it is hard to believe that they lasted the full fourteen months. When the call came from the Council with an allocation in Una’s old estate it was like a million Christmases came at once. The joy in the children’s eyes was indescribable.

They have moved in now and their routine is back to normal. But Una can see the difference in the family. The youngest one is more introverted. The eldest more bold. And Sean, well he doesn’t say much but he still hasn’t gotten over the shame of it all.

Laura

Laura and her young twins live in the box bedroom of her mother’s Council house. To be honest, box is an overstatement. Between her bed, the bunk-beds for the girls and all the kids’ things there is literally no space to move.

Her mam and dad have the main bedroom. Her sister has the other bedroom. And her brother sleeps on the couch. Laura doesn’t recall the house feeling so cramped when she was growing up.

She remembers when the babies were born. Their father was so happy. He promised he would have the deposit for a flat saved in a few months and that Laura could decorate it whatever way she wanted. They knew it would be a long wait for a Council house but that didn’t matter. His job wasn’t bad and the prospect of more hours was good.

The babies were just 18 months old when the crash happened. They never caught the driver of the car that caused the accident but the CCTV clearly showed they were drunk, careering down the wrong side of the road. The damage from the crash was so bad Laura never got to see his body.

She cried for a month. Only the twins kept her going. Sure she had to hold it together for them. But now the girls were six. Six long years trapped in the box bedroom.

Laura has been to every TD and Councillor and they all tell her the same thing. The waiting time for a two bedroom is eleven years long. Without medical or homeless priority she just has to wait it out. The idea of another five years cooped up in the box bedroom is hard to face.

The damp started to appear after the girls turned four. Big black patches in the corners and around the window sills. Laura is convinced it is making the girls’ asthma worse. The Council say it’s condensation and she should open the windows more often. Are they serious? It’s cold enough in here what with the old rotten wooden window frames. She’s not sure which is worse, the damp musty smell of the mould or the sharp stink of bleach that hangs in the room for days after the weekly clean.

Five more years. The girls will be eleven before they have a place they can call home. But then at least she’s not stuck in some grotty BnB in the city centre. The girl across the road was almost two years homeless. At least she has her family and friends around her. But still … five more years …

John

John was employed all his life with the Corporation. He was an honest and hard-working man. He and his wife bought the family home in the 1970s. A beautiful semi-detached house in one of the new private estates. The kids were born. Wages were good. He was happy. Until the drink took hold.

He doesn’t remember how long it took but the marriage eventually broke down. He left the house and got digs in the city centre. Eventually he dried out and got his life back together. But too late to patch things up at home. That part of his life was gone forever.

He managed to keep his job. Sober for ten years, he secured a promotion and life went on. His landlord was a decent man. Charged a fair rent, kept the flat in good order, never intruded.

But now John is retired, his pension is small and the landlord is selling up. He couldn’t believe it when he saw what the market rents were for a small one bedroom flat, €1,200 a month! The Housing Assistance Payment (HAP) would cover just half that. His pension brings in €897.43 a month. So after rent he would be left with just €297 a month to live on. Impossible!

The Council might be able to offer him something but not for a few years. What will he do until then? At his age he couldn’t face a hostel full of drug users. Nothing wrong with them mind you, but not at his age. Maybe he’ll find a bedsit in the city centre. They were banned a few years back but he’s heard there are still a few on offer. The prospect of an outside toilet up a flight of stairs at his age and with his enlarged prostate gland is pretty daunting.

John has six months before his Notice to Quit comes up. Something will come up. Maybe his landlord will change his mind. But to be honest at 70 years of age he never thought he would be facing this.

Other real people

These are not fictional stories. They are real cases from my constituency clinic. And there are thousands more.

I could tell you about the student who may have to leave college midway through his degree in business management because the rent is so high after a 17 percent increase, the third such hike in three years. Even with his part-time job he can’t manage. He could commute but the five-hour round trip every day would have a real impact on his studies. Maybe he should just pack it in and get a job. The local supermarket in his home village is looking for full-time staff. Who knows, after a few months there might even be a supervisor’s role.

Then there is the young graduate, working hard in her first job having to choose between paying for rent, fuel or food as payday approaches. A while back the cooker broke but the landlord took a month to fix it. Living on takeaways for four weeks straight is no joke. She could have taken him to the Residential Tenancies Board but flats are so scarce these days she didn’t want to risk being hit with a Notice to Quit.

Or the working couple in their thirties desperate to save a deposit to buy their own home, forced to live apart because there isn’t enough space in either of their parents’ houses for both of them. When there are young children involved the separation is even more painful. And because house prices are so damn high, even when they have the deposit securing the mortgage is not guaranteed. They could always look for somewhere outside the city. What a choice; never-ending commutes or impossible mortgage payments.

I could take you to Traveller halting sites where families are living in Dickensian conditions which should have been eradicated in the nineteenth century. I could introduce you to families with special needs children living in accommodation that is so unsuitable it is actively holding back their physical and emotional development. I could bring you to Direct Provision centres where families who have secured their legal right to remain in the country are trapped in their hotel room for years because they cannot secure private rental accommodation.

These are the human faces of our dysfunctional housing system. They are people who are doing everything right. They get up early in the morning. They work hard. They care for their children. They respect their neighbours. All they want is the chance to have a place to call home. But our housing system is so bad, abnormal and difficult they simply can’t access secure and affordable accommodation.

In the pages that follow there will be a lot of facts and statistics. But behind every single number stands Una and Sean and their five children, Laura and her twins, John, struggling students, hard pressed renters, delayed first-time buyers, those living on the absolute fringes of our housing system and tens of thousands like them. Victims of a housing system that is abnormal, impaired and disruptive of normal social relations.

A Dysfunctional System

Why is our housing system like this? Was it always this way? What decisions were made, or not made, and by whom, that resulted in such dysfunction? Does it have to be this way? What alternatives are there? How much would they cost? How long would they take to implement? What do we have to do to get those in power to listen and act? Do we have to take power ourselves to make the necessary changes?

These are the questions that I will try to answer in the pages that follow. In asking and hopefully answering them I am trying to achieve a number of things. Firstly, to fully understand why we are where we are today. Secondly, to describe what a functional housing system could look like. And thirdly to set out a plan of action for all those who believe, as I do, that change can only be achieved through mass social mobilisation and progressive parliamentary action.

My central argument is that our housing system is this way because it was designed so. People in positions of power took advice and made decisions which resulted in the dysfunction all around us. Sometimes they did so with sincere and genuine intent. Other times they were incompetent, corrupt or greedy. But what matters is less why people made these decisions, more the impact those decisions had and continue to have on the lives of real people.

The key features of our current housing system are an under-provision of public non-market housing and an over-reliance on the private market to meet housing need. This involves massive subsidies to landowners, developers, landlords and investment funds. It is based on a conception of housing as a commodity rather than a social necessity. It prioritises, whether intentionally or not, profit over need and as a consequence generates levels of housing inequality and poverty which are structural requisites rather than unintended consequences of the system.

Any alternative functional housing system must reverse these trends and place the large-scale provision of public non-market housing at its very centre. Housing is too fundamental a need for human well-being to be left to the boom and bust cycle of the market.

The book that follows attempts to make the argument, in as convincing a manner as possible, that at the core of our dysfunctional housing system is an over-reliance on the private market and thus the key ingredient to a stable, secure and affordable housing system is public housing.

But slogans and sound bites are not enough. The people in need of safe, secure and affordable housing deserve more than that. They need a credible, costed and coherent alternative to our current dysfunctional housing system. One that can be implemented in the real world, that can secure the active endorsement of a majority of the people and that with the right kind of Government could start to be constructed from today.

Somewhere between the sincerity of inadequate amelioration and the energy of impossibilist rupture lies a pathway to a functional housing system that guarantees all people a place they can call home. The book you are about to read tries to signpost that pathway and offer a glimpse, albeit sketchy, of the final destination.