Ending The Housing Nightmare In Dublin & Ireland

The housing nightmare is a reality for our city. It affects almost everyone's lives. Sky high rents and house prices, record homeless figures, and yet we have so many vacant buildings and land that could be built on. We need to change this. We have a comprehensive plan to address the housing crisis, you can see the full document here.

• Ending longterm vacancy & dereliction
• Investing in our construction workforce
• Retrofitting revolution - warm homes, cheaper bills, less emissions
• Building on state land with a state construction company
• Our ambitious social housing transformation

1. ENDING LONGTERM VACANCY & DERELICTION

Vacancy and dereliction suck the lives out of our communities. There are a number of sites I have been highlighting for some time now: 8 & 10 on Ferguson Road in Drumcondra, 19 & 21 Connaught Street in Phibsborough, and Aldborough house on Portland row. have had a campaign to bring Aldborough house back into use, it was the site of the first theatre on the island of Ireland. We need to see the state take over sites like Aldborough house because our communities are crying out for housing, for childcare spaces, and for community amenities.

To end the scourge of vacancy and dereliction and bring these desperately needed homes back into use, first we need to undertake a new national survey and mapping exercise of vacancy and dereliction to provide a comprehensive database of vacant and derelict sites, which is currently lacking. This will include publicly owned vacant buildings such as those in the HSE estate which we will redevelop as key worker housing. We will then introduce our new comprehensive plan to tackle dereliction, and resource local authorities to CPO properties left vacant or derelict for over three years with a new streamlined process. 

Some of our plans to end this scourge of vacancy are:

• Increase the Vacant Homes Tax to ten times the rate of LPT with a minimum charge of €3,000 per year to encourage owners to bring their property back into use. 
• Resource local authorities to hire more staff to tackle vacancy and dereliction, and undertake the CPO of properties and provide additional capital funding for acquisitions.
• Ringfence revenue from the VHT and Residential Zones Land Tax for the local authorities in came from to fund further vacancy and dereliction measures.
• Overhaul the Derelict Sites Acts, increase the levy and improve collection by using the Revenue Commissioners to collect unpaid levies. 

2. GROWING THE CONSTRUCTION WORKFORCE

if we want to build more houses we need people to build them. We will implement a strategic plan to grow the construction workforce and make the Housing Agency responsible for implementing it.

• Apprentices: at the heart of this we need to support craft apprentices with a livable wage, right now they get paid less than the minimum wage for the first 3 years, work is work.  Right now there is a dropout rate of up to 20%. will ensure apprentices are paid at least the living wage and abolish apprenticeship fees. So many leave to Australia for a better quality of life - lets give them that here.
• Bringing construction workers back: we need to make the construction sector an attractive sector to work in again, that means decent wages and conditions. We also want to launch a campaign to bring back workers to the state.
• Ending Bogus Self-Employment: The growth of subcontracting has worsened conditions for workers in the sector and created a culture of bogus self-employment. Labour will introduce new statutory measures to create a presumption of employment status.

3. A RETROFITTING REVOLUTION - WARM HOMES, CHEAPER BILLS, LESS EMISSIONS

One of my top priorities, I will push as a TD is a street-by-street retrofitting campaign. It is hugely inefficient to expect individual householders to step up and upgrade their own homes when we could cut the costs and speed up the time by commencing a street by street retrofitting programme led by the State. We need to see retroffiing as a public good and invest accordingly.

There is a clear link between warmer homes and lower emissions. In Dublin city there are 15,000 homes built pre-1940s, these homes are effectively excluded from a large part of the SEAI warmer homes scheme. At the same time, there are thousands of apartments in our city, yet they are not at all mentioned by the national retrofitting plan. 

We know from ESRI research that has been published over recent years that those who live in apartments and flats tend to be, on average, on a lower income, their accommodation tends more to be rented than owner-occupied, and they are more likely to experience energy deprivation when compared with those who live in houses.

On top of this there are so many people who simply cannot afford to take out a loan to access the current grant schemes. All together I think the state needs to step up and invest into the future of our country. We need to go street by street and ensure that every house, rented or not, has a suitable energy efficiency level. This is about tackling the cost of living crisis and the climate crisis through a holistic approach.

This will be funded from a new National Retrofitting Fund under the SEAI using €1 billion from the Apple tax windfall, where the State will pick up the cost of energy efficiency upgrades, co-ordinated by local Community Energy Advisors. An offer will be made to cover all homes, with some level of clawback for higher incomes households and rental tenancies.

4. BUILDING ON STATE LAND WITH A STATE CONSTRUCTION COMPANY

In Dublin Central alone, there are 33 acres of state land identified as sites that could be turned into homes - we believe that should be done by the state and not sold off to private developers to cream the profits off of state land.

We will transform the Land development agency into a State Construction Company (SCC), which over time will develop a
direct build capacity by employing construction workers to build not-for-profit housing on state owned land in partnership with local authorities.

In the meantime, projects will continue to be tendered. We will aim to deliver at least 10,000 social, cost rental and affordable homes through the SCC within three years of operation through a mix of delivery models.

5. OUR AMBITIOUS SOCIAL HOUSING TRANSFORMATION

When we look at cities like Vienna, we can see just how much a strong social housing stock can make a difference.

Between social housing waiting lists and HAP there are nearly 120,000 households with an unmet housing need. Labour will seek to increase the share of social housing to 20% of Ireland’s overall housing stock, and over the medium-term double capital investment.

Our plan to do this:

• Deliver mixed tenure housing developments that promote social cohesion by dispersing social units among affordable units and ensure that community infrastructure like schools and primary health services are in place from the outset.
• Provide increased funding for turning around vacant social housing ‘voids’. 
• Ensure that the framework for allocations prioritise those living in long-term homelessness.
• Establish an independent statutory appeals process for social housing eligibility/assessment.
• Increase social housing income limits to €45,000 per single person and benchmark future increase to wage growth.
• Gradually phase down reliance on HAP subsidy, but in the interim, we will allow HAP tenants to remain on the social housing list and will not consider their housing need as having been met while they are in receipt of the payment.
• Prioritise the development of more social housing for one-adult households.
• Invest in estate regeneration and energy efficiency upgrades of existing social housing.

LABOUR'S PLAN TO BUILD MORE HOMES INCLUDES DELIVERY OF:

• An average of 6,500 affordable homes a year with 30,000 over five years, rising to 11,000 by 2030.
• An average of 5,000 cost-rental homes a year with 25,000 over five years, rising to 6,000 per year by 2030.
• An average of 13,400 social homes a year with 67,000 over five years, rising to 18,000 per year by 2030.

These are our minimum necessary targets to reflect demand and capacity, and we expect these to be exceeded. Labour will carry out an annual review of housing targets and seek to increase these further as output increases.