Sir, – Christmas is a time for family gatherings, and many families have a tradition of coming together to catch up as well as celebrate. I wonder how many family gatherings like ours had housing as a hot topic of discussion.
We reached the unanimous conclusion that those saving for a house were in fact sponsoring the Housing Assistance Payment (Hap), which is not only competing with them directly in the rental market, but also in the sales market. There was a lot of anger upon realisation that local authorities purchase and lease from the private sector in competition with taxpayers, who are obliged to fork out taxes so that local authorities are handed money from central government to compete directly against them. In so doing, local authorities push up prices in a scarce market through excessive demand. Family members have different housing needs, but when we went through the variety of needs, the conclusion was reached that nobody really benefited from the Hap, hubs and hotels solution, which is the root cause of increasing homelessness as rents have long since exceeded a reasonable level. Building social housing now on the scale required is the solution as it removes local authorities from the private sector and from forcing prices up due to excessive demand and provides essential stability for those in need of social housing.
Furthermore, we agreed that the Government strategy of keeping housing off the State books has had social costs well beyond what decent people are willing to tolerate. The irony is that the EU Regional Development Fund is available to local authorities if Minister for Housing Eoghan Murphy would only allow them to apply. – Yours, etc,
CAITRÍONA McCLEAN,
Lucan,
Co Dublin.