Homes for All: Towards a Public Housing Revolution

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Purpose and diagnosis

The paper presents housing as essential social infrastructure and argues that Ireland's market-led system did not match homes to human need. It contrasts rising rents, homelessness and housing waiting lists with public subsidies for private landlords and developers. It also argues that high home ownership concealed class differences, mortgage risk and a weak public rental sector.

The document criticises the long-term movement of social housing towards private provision. It describes Housing Assistance Payment and leasing as arrangements in which the state pays for accommodation without gaining a permanent public asset. It also questions policies that targeted public housing narrowly at the lowest-income households, arguing that this encouraged stigma and left many working households dependent on insecure private renting.

The case for common ownership

The paper treats housing in the same way as other public infrastructure. A home provides security, supports education and employment, and allows communities to develop. The authors argue that a broad public system can pool risk, plan for population need and retain land and buildings for future generations.

Its preferred model is mixed-income public housing. Publicly owned developments would be open to a much wider range of households. Tenants would pay differential rents linked to household income, so higher rents from better-off households would cross-subsidise lower rents and help meet finance, maintenance and management costs. The model would mix incomes while keeping one tenure type: every home would remain publicly owned and managed.

Main proposals

The paper calls for three connected interventions:

1. A large programme of direct public construction, delivered through a state housing corporation and local authorities.
2. Public land to remain in public ownership and to be used for mixed-income public housing.
3. Rents to be based on income, with allocations for households that have urgent medical or social needs.

The proposed housing corporation would borrow at public-sector rates, build at cost and retain the resulting homes. The paper says direct building would remove developer profit, land acquisition and marketing costs from the public programme. It also proposes acquisitions where these provide value, while warning against relying on purchases as a substitute for construction.

Funding and scale

The paper compares several approaches: Housing Assistance Payment, privately built targeted housing, provision by approved housing bodies and direct public building. Its worked model estimates the capital and financing needed for 70,000 homes, then compares this with rent revenue and the continuing cost of private subsidies. The figures are historical estimates, rather than current costings.

The central financial claim is that a permanent public asset and mixed-income rent base can support a large building programme more efficiently than recurring payments to landlords. Cross-subsidy would help cover long-term costs, while public borrowing and direct construction would reduce them.

Intended outcome

The stated aim is secure, good-quality and affordable housing for a broad section of society. The paper connects housing with transport, childcare, green space and other community infrastructure. It proposes permanent public ownership so that investment continues to benefit later tenants, and reserves part of each development for people with the greatest housing need.

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