Housing

The Workers’ Party believes that access to affordable, quality housing is a basic right, but public housing is the only way to guarantee that right.

The privatisation of housing provision in Ireland has included the sale of public housing and land, alongside the use of public money to pay private landlords to provide housing.

Privatisation restricts access to public housing and leaves ordinary people exposed to housing insecurity, homelessness, unaffordable rents and house prices beyond the reach of the majority.

Solidarity Housing: Public Housing For All

The Workers’ Party believes that universal public housing provision, public housing for all, is the alternative. Our public housing policy, Solidarity Housing, provides for mixed-income public housing construction. It would provide affordable, quality public housing accessible to all, with rent levels based on income.

Solidarity Housing requires local councils or the state to set up a new State Housing Corporation. The corporation could use its assets, including public land, to raise finance for sustained public housing construction.

Solidarity Housing draws on Vienna’s approach to mixed-income public housing. It is a public alternative to the chaos of the private housing market, to rack-renting by private landlords and to greedy developers. It is a solution for those who cannot afford to buy, those who struggle to afford their rent and all those who struggle to keep a roof over their heads.

Housing Policy

The Workers’ Party is committed to:

• Large scale construction of mixed-income public housing through a state construction company and direct labour schemes based on the Solidarity Housing model of public housing for all.
• Allocating the necessary resources to local authorities for an immediate and substantial programme of public housing construction.
• Establishing housing as a basic and essential human right. Without access to suitable housing the supposed rights to family life, to healthcare, and to education are empty.
• Ensuring that planning should provide the transport links, childcare facilities, local amenities, and stability that allows for vibrant and inclusive communities.
• Strictly controlling the price of building land. Successive governments have refused to implement the recommendation of the Kenny Report.
• Guaranteeing that all housing built must reach the highest international building standards.
• Strengthening and enforcing the Derelict Sites Act so as to stop dereliction and speed up the regeneration of brownfield sites.
• Implementing a windfall tax on all profits from land rezoning.
• Ending the privatisation of public housing.
• Supporting local, non-profit, cooperative, self-build, own-use housing initiatives.
• Ending all property related tax incentives as these have proven to be economically disastrous for this country.

The Private Rented Sector

Rent levels have long reached crisis point in the private rented sector. Thousands of individuals and families are being forced into this market by the refusal of successive governments to invest in public housing and by the policy of the deliberate sell-off and run down of local authority housing stocks. The Workers’ Party believes that individuals and families in the private rented sector are entitled to decent living conditions, fair rent, protection against exorbitant rent increases, security of tenure, and protection of deposits against illegal or unjust deductions.

The Workers’ Party would:

• Introduce legislation to control rents within and between tenancies, with clear guidelines for establishing rent levels. This must be accompanied by legislation to ensure security of tenure for tenants whose properties are being sold.
• Redirect subsidies from private landlords to local-authority-owned housing.
• Implement a comprehensive package of measures to ensure that tenants in private rented accommodation have fair rents, security of tenure, decent standards and conditions.
• Establish independent deposit protection by requiring all deposits to be held by an independent body in a self-financing fund.