Richard Boyd Barrett: Blasts housing policy, warns on rents

Yeah, I really am furious listening to the Minister of saying this is about social media clips to diminish the seriousness of what's at stake here. Okay, yeah, well listen, I'm in this house since 2011 and I was in about two or three months and a circular was produced by the Department of Housing, which then was a junior ministry. There wasn't a senior ministry because we didn't have the homelessness and housing crisis that we have now. The need for it to become a senior ministry was because of the housing crisis that then commenced a few years later. But I remember the circular, there was no fanfare, there was no press releases, came out, this was the Fine Gael Labour government, and it basically, the circular said, we're stopping direct capital investment in public housing, we're going to outsource it. So it didn't come up with the name HAP then, but that was the beginning of HAP. And I remember putting out a press release and holding a press briefing, one journalist turned up, as I tried to explain, it was RAS at the time, they didn't have HAP, and I tried to explain what they were proposing was going to be a disaster. And that it was essentially doing away with the direct provision of social housing. And it later gained the name HAP, and I remember that as well, Jan O'Sullivan, we were in here for a long debate like this, went on for hours and hours, where we tried to explain why the HAP thing was going to be a disaster. Because it was going to replace social housing with the outsourcing to the private sector. And, of course, it all turned out to be the case. And, of course, the other big feature of it was Michael Noonan at the time meeting all of the vulture funds, which were invited in to buy up all the distressed property. And it was a deliberate policy. I think in 2013 he met with 65 or so vulture funds, and basically asked them to take over all the property, the distressed property that was in the hands of NAM. And we were there saying this is going to be a disaster. And at that time, actually, the government had the... For a brief while, they had the housing sector in their hands. And if they had started building public and affordable housing then, instead of doing the exact opposite, we wouldn't be in this mess. We wouldn't be in this mess at all. They had the assets, and so on. And, by the way, just to say something about sort of foreign investment, private investment. The houses that are built, in the end, are built by Labour that is in this country, in this country, right? I mean, all the capital is digits on a computer screen, right? When you're talking about money from abroad. The actual people who build stuff is land and labour and materials here, right? Now, either those people are building stuff that is affordable, like social and affordable housing, or they're building it to make profit, which is what's happening at the moment. They're building it to make profit. So what they're building is unaffordable. Even as we speak, huge amounts of it. And, of course, they're building hotels and things like that, right? Hotels because it's profitable to build hotels. So there's a finite amount of labour, and there's a finite amount of land. Forgetting about all the digital figures that are floating around. And either that finite amount of labour, and land, and resources, and material is building affordable and social housing, or is building something else. Or, in many cases, not doing anything at all, because for periods of time, the people who controlled the land, and the labour, and the capital decided we're not going to build anything. Until it's profitable enough for us, we're not going to build anything. And that's what they did. A lot of the people who got the distressed assets from NAMA at a discount price sat on them, or leaped the stuff very, very slowly. And this is a very important point that the Minister needs to understand. Never, ever, ever are the investors that you're looking to court and lure and sort of incentivise here, never, ever, ever are they going to build to the price of the point that their profits go down? Why would they? Why would they? At the point at which they think their profits are going to go down, they're going to stop. That's what they're going to do. So the idea you're going to get to a magical point, somewhere, where rents start to go down, and house prices go down, somehow is just fantasy. Total fantasy. The only instance of that is a massive crash. That's what we did actually get. When the last time we had this mad policy of dancing to their tune, well, sorry, it never really stopped. But the crash, the dire crash of 2008 resulted from this madness of doing what they tell you. Now, we propose, Minister, that after all that litany of failures, because then the housing crisis ensued, at that time, for example, it was unknown for me in Dun Laoghaire, unknown, and most people in the country, it was unknown to have families with kids and so on in emergency accommodation. It just never happened. There was a particular profile to people who were in emergency accommodation. They were often very, very vulnerable people. But you didn't have families with kids in homeless accommodation when I first came into the Dáil. Now it's absolutely normalized. And it's going to increase because of this. And then you come forward with a bill, and here's your own words. We do not want rents for long-term tenancies to fall behind market rents. That's the purpose of this bill. Under no circumstances must we have low rents. That's what you're saying. We do not want rents for long-term tenancies to fall behind market rents. That means low rents are intolerable. We have to have them higher. Well, listen, that's plain English now. Seriously, that's plain English. And just in case there was any doubt about the motive, James Lawless said at the beginning of this year against what's the thinking? Housing is about international markets. It's actually a spreadsheet in Zurich or New York or Antwerp, more so than a builder looking at a site in Longford or Roscommon that's actually deciding what happens here. Now, you see, the point is it should be the builder looking, you know, in Roscommon or Dublin or whatever it is and looking at the land that we have that's owned, that's available, that's serviced and so on. The labour that we have available saying we need houses for people in this community, let's build them. And if we could do it in the 30s, 40s and 50s on a pretty big scale, when the country had, you know, it was virtually a third world country, we can certainly do it now with massive budget surpluses, with enormous budget surpluses, with record economic growth, with, you know, you look at the central bank figures on wealth, I think it's 1.3 trillion now, household wealth in this country, right? I bet half of it sitting in the banks, sitting in the banks. The credit unions weren't banging down the government's door for years saying we've 4 or 5 billion, we're willing to put it into housing. No problem, right? And the idea that we don't have suggestions, like, we produced that a few years ago, State Construction Company. There's two other parties that have similar views, State Construction Company. Let's build on the land we have and employ people directly rather than building unaffordable stuff, let's have them build affordable stuff. And let's have a situation where tenants, I mean, this is unbelievable what you're doing with this bill in terms of the position of tenants, I mean, I would defy any tenant at the end of this to know what sort of tenant they are. Are they a tenant of a big landlord? Are they a tenant of a small landlord? Are they a tenant, are they a student tenant? Because there's different rules for them. Are they a tenant post-March 2026 or pre-2026? And even pre-2026, there's a different demarcation depending on whether you're, what's the date in 2022? There's a difference if you're after 2022 or before 2022. Right, so, I mean, fair play to it. I mean, we're going to have great fun trying to figure out even what sort of tenants we're talking about and what position are they actually in. But the landlords will know there's an incentive to get these tenants out so I can reset the rents up to the highest possible level. Which is, meaning going on daft and seeing what the, if I can find three rents at 2,500, 3,000 or whatever. That's going to be the result, the result of all this. So what are we saying? We're saying that rents should be based on the ability of people to pay. We're saying that you shouldn't be evicted when you've done nothing wrong. Or for that matter now, as is going to be the case, lots of people getting evicted because they can't afford unaffordable rents. Shouldn't be evicted for not being able to afford unaffordable rents. When the rents are now, in Dublin, more than €24,000 in after-tax income required to pay the average rent in Dublin. After-tax income. So that's what, 33,000, 34,000 gross of your income has to go to pay an average rent in Dublin. So what are we talking about there? 50% of average earnings more. 50%. So if people can't pay that, and in many cases it's much higher than that, is it their fault if they get evicted? It's not really, is it? It's your fault that you've let rents go up to that level. And is it like what we're saying, is it really off the charts that nobody else is doing it when we say keep rents down to, you know, particular levels? Or reset them, by the way. We want to reset them downwards, just to be clear, Minister. Not just freeze them, we want to reset them downwards. But I'm just, you know, looking at this. Four cities where rent control works. Vienna. They have a system of rent ceilings, so you can't put rents above a certain level. 43% of all the housing is social housing in Vienna, and hard limits on rent increases. Their rents, and they have rents per square metre, which are a fraction of hours. A fraction of hours. About a third of what people are paying here on average. Stockholm. A renter's union negotiates the rents on a regular basis with the landlords, basically. And the utility value, but those rent controls, are used to set price ceilings, and there's also rents are set based on the utility value of the property. Without those rent controls, it's estimated that rents would be 68% higher in Stockholm than they currently are. Where else has rent controls? Barcelona has rent controls. Rent increases limited, ceilings, and so on. Works there. Berlin has rent control. So, the things that we're proposing, and proposed time and time again, can be done, and are done elsewhere. You just don't want to do it, because you find it difficult, and the landlords find it difficult, that they can't put rents up to the highest possible level, so you want to pass a piece of legislation that will ensure that they can, despite the housing misery that is causing for people. And you just think about it like, when I think about the families who are coming to me, I'm sure they must come in to you, Minister, and saying, they're in emergency accommodation, and it's their second year, and they're told, you know, well, oh, I'm 200 on the housing list, so there's no chance, basically. There's no chance they'll get in a council house for, you know, at least seven or eight years. So, go out and find a HAP property. Go out and find a HAP property. And, so that means, you have to find a property within, what's the, the homeless HAP rate now, they might allow you, and go and look for something, for say, 2,000, 2,000 a month, which, virtually no such thing exists. Right, so imagine how hopeless people feel. Go out and find something within that limit, but it, it doesn't, it doesn't actually exist out there. And now you're going to make that even more hopeless. Because now, they'd be looking for rents that are, 2,500 or 3,000. Euro a month. Putting them in an even more hopeless position. And if they are one of the few that might have got a HAP tenancy, but are paying the top up, because they would have to be paying a top up, if they're on a social housing list, to, to get a HAP tenancy these days, which has already put them in a difficult position, and is threatening to drive them into arrears at any time, if there's any difficulties, in their situation, any, you know, extra costs come in, for kids, or anything like that, they could very, very easily find themselves, in difficulty. But now those rents are going to go up higher. Almost certainly, the HAP rates won't go up, to match that. And even if they do, it just means the state is now paying for it. But anyway, they won't. They won't go up to the level. So there will be even more difficulty, paying these unaffordable rents. So that means they're going to get in trouble, people are going to get into arrears, and they're going to get evicted, as a result of it. So that's like, what's actually going on. So I don't know how you can possibly justify this, Minister. I just do not know, how you can justify it. And the reason we're here, angry about it, and talking about it, is not because we want a social media clip. It is because, next week, and the week after, and the month after, and the month after, we're going to have to deal with the human misery, that comes through the door of our offices, as a result of what you're doing here. That's the reason we're speaking about this, and proposing that you should abandon this bill, and actually listen to what others are saying. Because you lot have had your chance, and you've failed on housing. So maybe you might consider looking, at some of the alternative proposals, being put forward from this side. That's correct. And,