The neoliberal roots of the current crisis

This chapter outlines how Ireland is an interesting case through which to understand housing, because of its particular history. It shows that housing crises are not new, nor are they universal, either within countries or across different countries. It explores different philosophies of housing, from Keynesianism to neoliberalism. It details Ireland’s housing history, from early state intervention in favour of tenant farmers, and responses to the housing crisis of the early years of the Irish free State through building public council housing. It details local authority housing expansion through the 20th Century, producing high-quality homes and neighbourhoods. It also details the neoliberal housing shift internationally, as a dramatic shift took place in the economic order in the late 1970s and the 1980s. It then introduces the concepts of financialisation and marketisation in housing, and explains ho w neoliberalism unfolded in the Irish housing system. It then details the Irish housing boom and bust of the 2000s. It ends with an overview of cost rental housing: unitary and dualist housing systems, to understand the Irish housing system.

The normalisation of homelessness

The Irish government has argued that Irish homelessness levels are normal in comparison with other countries. This chapter compares homelessness in Ireland with other countries. It challenges the normalisation of homelessness and the housing crisis as the narrative of normalisation places the blame and responsibility for the crisis on to the victims and how this exacerbates feelings of stigma and shame among homeless people and those threatened with homelessness. It outlines new measures for monitoring homelessness and housing exclusion including the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Housing three-dimensional approach anchored in human rights and the European Typology of Homelessness and Housing Exclusion (ETHOS) framework. An adequate understanding and measurement of the true scale of homelessness and housing exclusion is required. It shows the health and wellbeing of children is affected not just by homelessness but also by overcrowded or poor housing, and by frequent moves and ‘may cause adverse childhood experiences with resultant mental health effects that may be lifelong’. It provides an estimation of Ireland’s actual level of homelessness and housing exclusion.

Generation Rent

This chapter details how the younger generations and lower-income households are most affected by the housing and homelessness crisis. It shows how huge aspects of their lives have become precarious and insecure, as a result of insecure, low-paid and often part-time jobs, and insecure and unaffordable housing. Generation Rent is the new housing precariat, living with precarious housing, precarious work contracts and an inability to access mortgage credit, alongside unaffordable house prices and rent. It details the structural shift in Ireland’s housing system: decline in home-ownership rates and rise in private rental sector. Generation Rent now extends to the middle-aged and older generations as shown in the increase in the number of people renting in their 40s and 50s. It looks at increasing housing cost overburden rates where young people on low incomes are most severely affected by the issue of housing affordability than young people on higher incomes. Generation Rent also includes Generation Stuck at Home - those forced to live at home with theirparents as they cannot afford to move out into the rental sector, orbecause they have been evicted, unable to meet mortgages, cannot access social housing, or are trying to savefor a deposit.

The lost decade of social and affordable housing: austerity and marketisation

This chapter outlines the ‘lost decade’ of social housing provision in Ireland: the austerity and marketisation policies that resulted in the collapse of social housing building from 2009 to 2019. It shows how austerity measures involved an intensification of the ongoing neoliberal shift from the direct building of social housing by local authorities to the marketisation of social housing provision through the private sector. The forms of marketisation are detailed including the increased use of the private rental sector for social housing (via subsidies and leasing), but also the purchasing of units from the private market. It details how from 2010 onwards, the provision of social housing via subsidies to the private rental sector almost entirely replaced direct building of social housing. This includes the Governments housing plan, Rebuilding Ireland which embedded marketisation and austerity, by using the housing benefit - the Housing Assistance Payment (HAP) as the main form of housing provision. It details how HAP and other private market forms of social housing provision worsens the housing supply crisis, is poor value for money, results in tenant insecurity and discrimination, and facilitates the financialisation of housing. And how this is one of the main reasons the Irish housing system suffered such a major shock with the emergence of a new homelessness crisis in 2013.

Working for social justice: community, activism and academia

This chapter explores the author’s housing journey, from living in private rental housing, to working with disadvantaged communities on housing and human rights, campaigning on homelessness and the right to housing, to being a publically engaged academic researching and engaging in the national policy debate on housing. It details the everyday impact of austerity on disadvantaged social housing communities and their response through a successful ‘Rights-in-action’ human right to housing campaign. It also details participatory action research with homeless families, the Participatory Action Human Rights and Capability Approach. In then discusses the role of academics, policy makers and researchers in social change, empowerment and participation in relation to social justice and housing issues. It interrogates the concept of knowledge production – who’s interest does it serve? Drawing on Freire and Gramsci the Chapter outlines five areas, for the academic researcher (and this can be applied to policy analysts and researchers, NGOs, human rights organisations, trade unions and community activists) to contribute to achieving an egalitarian, socially and environmentally just, and rights-based housing system.

The people push back: protests for affordable homes for all

Housing has always been a deeply political issue given its centrality to people’s lives. However, how it is politicised and treated, and its prominence in political and public debate, has changed over time. Housing is now becoming a political battleground of the 21st century between big finance, government and citizens seeking affordable housing. This chapter details the new housing protests and movements in Ireland challenging evictions and rising homelessness, and the scandal of derelict properties and high rents, and are campaigning for the use of vacant public land for affordable homes for all and the inclusion of the right to housing in the Constitution and law. A housing movement has been increasingly active in Ireland since 2014, responding to growing homelessness, and rental and mortgage arrears crises. Activity initially involved a number of small grassroots groups working incrementally to develop strategies and tactics around how to tackle the housing crisis in Ireland. A larger housing social movement erupted sporadically in 2016 over plans to demolish and redevelop Apollo House, a former government office block, and then in a more sustained manner in 2018 with the Take Back the City and Raise the Roof campaigns.

Homelessness: the most extreme inequality

This chapter shows the devastating human impacts of Homelessness. It details the trauma it causes children and describes it as a form of ‘structural violence’. It details the changing nature of homelessness and emergence of new family homelessness, as well as highlighting the wider lack of social housing and the centrality of social housing in providing a home for those on low incomes and in vulnerable situations. It details the structural causes of homelessness and challenges the ‘within person’ explanations of homelessness. It also shows the increase in homelessness in recent years has also seen a corresponding increase in expenditure on the provision of homelessness services rather than prevention. It looks at discrimination in housing – and state responses through the housing assistance ground in the new Equality Legislation and its impact. It details how the new form of homeless accommodation for families, Family Hubs are institutionalising women and children.

Introduction: a new housing crisis

This Chapter details how the Irish housing systems, and housing systems across the world, are experiencing a structural ‘shock’. We are in the midst of an unprecedented housing and homelessness crisis. This details the dramatic increase in housing inequalities and exclusion, from the rise in homelessness, mortgage arrears and foreclosures, to the collapse in home-ownership rates and, in particular, the emergence of ‘Generation Rent’ and ‘Generation Stuck at Home’. This new Generation Rent is being locked out of traditional routes to affordable secure housing such as home ownership, social housing and secure low-rent housing. They are being pushed into private rental markets with unaffordable high rents and insecurity of tenure, or forced into hidden homelessness, couchsurfing, sleeping in cars, or pushed back to live with their parents. Ireland has had the largest fall in home ownership rates among European Union (EU) countries in the past three decades. This chapter shows that the current housing situation and crisis is not a temporary blip, but a deep and profound structural crisis that is in danger of becoming a permanent crisis. Our national and global housing systems are in crisis and this is a key juncture.

A Green New Deal for Housing: affordable sustainable homes and communities for all

This chapter sets out why the connection between housing and the environment urgently needs to be moved centre stage in both the housing and climate debates. It links climate change and housing together conceptually through the centrality of home to the human existence. It sets out a new housing plan: a Green New Deal for Housing in Ireland which details the key solutions for transforming our housing systems to provide affordable, sustainable homes for all. This includes a new housing plan, A Green New Deal for Housing in Ireland: Affordable Sustainable Homes and Communities for All, including mixed income public housing for all, a dedicated Affordable Sustainable Homes Building Agency, reimagining public housing, transforming social housing from being treated as a stigmatized form of accommodation restricted to very low-income households to becoming a model of desirable housing available and attractive to a much broader range of low- and middle-income households, using public land for public and not-for-profit affordable sustainable homes, how the new housing model can be financed, and why a new housing model should be underpinned by the right to housing as foundation of housing policy and law. It develops indicators for assessing housing models: and compares the market (dualist) model and public, affordable, sustainable, human rights (unitary) model.

The new waves of financialisation: vultures and REITs

This chapter describes and details the wave of global real estate and vulture investment in distressed assets and loans, as the second wave of financialisation of residential property (housing), following the first wave of financial market and equity involvement in mortgage lending and securitisation from the late 1990s to 2008. It then defines and details a third wave of financialisation is evident in the post-2010 period as global institutional investors have increasingly invested in the private rental ‘build-to-rent’ sector. This third wave is a further development in the restructuring of the finance–real estate relationship through the increased role of large-scale corporate finance and global private equity funds (pension funds, hedge funds, wealth funds, shell funds, private equity) in the provision of rental residential property. It shows how housing and land is providing another important vehicle for investing the global ‘wall of money’ searching for higher returns in a context of reduced profitability and rising risk in the wider ‘real’ economy. It details how the Irish state’s strategy to overcome the global property and financial crash of 2008 and achieve the recovery of financial institutions and the wider economy was based on the sale of ‘toxic’ and ‘non-performing’ loans and associated land and property, at a considerable discount, to international ‘vulture funds’ and property investors via the National Asset Management Agency (NAMA) and domestic banks. The strategy was based on a deepening of the financialisation of the Irish housing (and wider property) system.