The housing market has been getting a lot of attention in the media. Speculation is centering on whether there is a decline in house sales, and if the housing bubble is going to burst.
The cabal of planners, bankers, property developers, speculators and their pals in the government and the media are rushing to calm people’s fears of a downturn. There is talk of “soft landings” and that no one has anything really to worry about. Yet the evidence of a decline in the housing market is mounting.
They are concerned that the source of their massive profits over the last decade and a half may be about to dry up. This is their only concern. The millionaires and billionaires who have made mega-profits don’t give a damn that working class people have been priced out of the market and that hundreds of thousands can’t afford to buy a home.
It is estimated that a couple earning the average wage can’t afford to buy a house in four of the five main cities in the country. This alone should be enough to condemn the Fianna Fail/PD government to defeat at the next election. Bertie Ahern’s government’s approach to housing has been to allow the speculators and property developers to dominate house building. 50,000 families and individuals are on waiting lists for social housing. In the last nine years, this government has only delivered a pitifully small number of houses under either the social housing or “affordable” housing programmes.
Even those who have scraped the money together to buy a house (in some cases by taking 100% mortgages over 40 years) are now being hit hard by interest rate rises. On average first time buyers are paying €391 a month more than they did last December. And interest rates are set to increase even further in the next six months.
Higher interest rates will create enormous hardship for many families already struggling to cover all of their bills. It is sickening that the banks, which are already making billions in profits, will benefit from this hardship - parasites sucking the last cent from the family budget.
The Socialist Party rejects the idea that the private sector should control house construction. This society should have a housing policy that is based on providing homes for everyone who needs them. A publicly owned construction company could build quality homes for all who need them with properly planned social infrastructure, schools and public transport. By taking the construction industry and the banks into democratic public ownership, the government would be able to provide cheap credit for those who wish to buy their homes and quality social housing could be provided at affordable rents.
Profiteering could be eradicated overnight and having a home would become a right not a burden to be paid for long after you retire!
The Socialist Party calls for:
- Compulsory purchase of land by local authorities at agricultural prices to build up land banks for an emergency social housing building programme.
- Public ownership under democratic workers’ control & management of construction companies and financial institutions -
> to bring down prices and allow re-investment in a massive public house building scheme for low cost rent/purchase;
> to enable the redirection of €1.63 billion of taxpayers’ money from subsidising private landlords into public housing
> to ensure decent wages and conditions for construction & allied trades workers.
