Comment: Rights to affordable housing, but not yet: ThePost.ie


TCH Archives > Sunday Business Post > 2006/04/16 > Comment: Rights to affordable housing, but not yet

Comment: Rights to affordable housing, but not yet
Sunday, April 16, 2006 - By Padraic Kenna
Is there any place for housing rights in today’s hothouse property market?

As young people, couples and families seek to enter the world of mass-produced home ownership, affordable housing is becoming rarer.

While the new Social Partnership Agreement strives to address this controversial political issue, could it be that Irish state housing measures are based on outdated concepts in a globalised world?

Charities, religious groups and some political organisations in Ireland demand a constitutional right to state provision of a basic unit of accommodation.

But reducing housing rights to this minimalist level may not be an appropriate response for a modern industrialised society.

Irish courts have already begun to address the right to affordable housing. It is now seven years since the constitutional rights of people unable to afford their homes were upheld by the Supreme Court in the Planning and Development Bill 1999 reference.

Chief Justice Ronan Keane pointed out that ‘‘to enable people of relatively moderate means or suffering from some form of social or economic handicap to buy their own homes in an economic climate where housing costs and average incomes make that difficult’’ was socially just and required by the common good.

This common good and social justice motive could legally trump private property rights enshrined in Articles 40 and 43 of the Constitution, effectively clearing the way for a constitutional right to affordable housing. So how has the state advanced this innovative legislative and judicial pathway?

Today, the state provides less than 8 per cent of new homes.

Efforts to persuade developers to provide up to 20 per cent of new sites (over four units) for social and affordable housing have been a dismal failure.

Only 374 units had been provided by 2004, with over half of these in the Fingal County Council area.

Legislation in 2002 allowed developers to make payments in lieu or provide alternative sites to dodge the judicially approved constitutional duty to the common good.

There are also signs that the ‘common good’ and ‘social justice’ are now being decided within the Social Partnership Agreement.

Social partnership - the style of organising the relationship between organised labour, capital and the state, adopted in Ireland since 1987 - has informed all social policy, including housing.

As the current agreement veers towards land, it is significant that the commitments of the 2003 partnership agreement to provide 10,000 new ‘affordable housing’ units for low-paid workers has been only symbolically advanced.

Other outcomes of that agreement - the introduction of US-style public-private partnerships in the state housing sector and the establishment of the Housing Forum of the social partners (which excludes housing consumers) - have been much more keenly progressed.

In recent times, housing legislation and policy in the dominant market system across Europe has adopted a divergent approach.

The primary policy consideration is to help the market to operate effectively by ensuring exchange of housing, access to mortgage finance and sustainable equity.

Less consideration is given to the circumstances of those who are badly housed or homeless, and whose residential segregation often compounds social and economic inequality.

Housing policy, as defined in this way, is thus mainly concerned with social (increasingly described as ‘affordable’) housing, including its privatisation.

Housing rights, defined at UN level, include a right to affordable housing, where personal or household costs should not threaten or compromise the attainment or satisfaction of other basic needs. Rights to adequate housing require a location which allows access to employment, healthcare, schools, childcare and other social facilities.

The Council of Europe is creating a precise definition of affordable housing rights in relation to Article 31 of the revised Social Charter, although the Irish government has refused to ratify this article.

Internationally, almost all states (except the US) have accepted core obligations on rights to adequate shelter and a minimum level of housing services without discrimination, often based on the principle of human dignity. These international guarantees signify that housing law involves considerations other than property rights, conveyancing and mortgages.

But it is also now becoming clear that social and affordable housing measures cannot be regarded in isolation, or merely as a guarantee of effective housing provision for those on low incomes or homeless people.

Such state measures are primarily used to bolster the market in key areas of political concern, but the demands of the housing market in Ireland do not yet require sustained state action in this area.

So far, there is no crisis in demand, nor a failure to market existing stock. Since the primary purpose of state policy is to facilitate the market, there is no real urgency in providing affordable housing to new households on low incomes.

Indeed, a recent report, the National Economic and Social Council (NESC) pointed out the irony that the Irish exchequer was a significant net recipient of revenues in the housing sector as a whole, even after increases in social housing spending.

Dr Padraic Kenna is the author of Housing Law and Policy in Ireland, just published by Clarus Press.