Housing Agency “talking Nonsense About Affordable Housing”

national | housing | press release Tuesday February 05, 2019 21:30 by pbp - People Before Profit

Press Release - People Before Profit Feb 5th 2019

Housing Agency “talking nonsense about affordable housing” – private developers completely incapable of providing real affordability.

People Before Profit TD, Richard Boyd Barrett, says “only way to deliver affordable housing is for state to build on public land.”

In a statement today, Richard Boyd Barrett TD, accused John O Connor of the State’s Housing Agency of “talking absolute nonsense about affordable housing”.

John O Connor has recently said that it would be “really dangerous” for councils to get involved in building or selling affordable housing and instead, he favours private developers building them and selling them to those eligible for the new government scheme.

Richard Boyd Barrett said: “Private developers are completely incapable of building affordable housing. Once private developers are involved there will be a profit margin knitted into the price, therefore upping the price of the house.”

“We have seen with the LIHAF scheme that private developer’s idea of affordable is way over €300,000, which is in no way affordable for the cohort of people earning less than €75,000.

“The only way to deliver real affordability is for the state to build housing on public land. According to the Minister, the cost of building a council home is between €180,000 and €220,000. If the state moved now to build on the land that is available to it, real affordability could be provided.”

“In 2016 Simon Coveney, who was then the Housing Minister, announced an affordable housing scheme, and here we are nearly three years later and not one affordable home has been provided by the government. We need this housing as a matter of urgency and the only sensible way to provide it is by the state taking charge of it.”