Dáil Éireann debate -
Tuesday, 23 Jan 2024

I move:

That Dáil Éireann:

notes:

— with escalating alarm, the ever-deepening homelessness crisis;

— that in November 2023 13,514 people, including 4,105 children, were in Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage funded emergency accommodation;

— that when all hostels and rough sleepers are included the true level of homelessness is closer to 20,000 people;

— that these figures do not include the tens of thousands of people sofa surfing or living in inadequate and inappropriate accommodation; and

— that the increased activity of investment funds, such as bulk purchasing of properties and increased rents, is driving further numbers of people into homelessness from the private rental sector;

further notes with concern that:

— the most recent report from the Health Research Board stated that 121 people experiencing homelessness died prematurely in 2021;

— the recommendations of the 2020 Interim Report on Mortality Amongst Single Homeless Population remain mostly unimplemented; and

— homeless charities are raising the alarm that homelessness and deaths of people experiencing homelessness are likely to rise in the time ahead;

condemns the fact that:

— since Fine Gael took office in 2011 homelessness has increased by 254 per cent and child homelessness by 540 per cent;

— since the current Government took office homelessness has increased by 61 per cent and child homelessness by 74 per cent; and

— the Government will not meet its obligations under the Lisbon Declaration to end long-term homelessness by 2030; and

agrees:

— that the Government bring forward measures to effectively ban investment funds from bulk purchasing homes that would otherwise be available to home buyers, local authorities or Approved Housing Bodies; and these measures must include increased stamp duty on such bulk purchases;

— to increase targets and accelerate the delivery of social and affordable housing;

— to the use of emergency planning and procurement powers and new building technologies and vacant homes to deliver an additional stream of social housing specifically for those in emergency accommodation or at risk of homelessness;

— to end homelessness amongst those aged over 55 years and significantly reduce family and child homelessness;

— that the annual target for the delivery of Housing First tenancies must be doubled to 500;

— that any funds saved from reductions in the numbers of people in emergency accommodation should be redirected to homeless prevention to further reduce the numbers of people experiencing homelessness;

— to expand and accelerate the tenant-in-situ schemes for social and affordable housing to reduce the risk of homelessness;

— to increase funding for the provision of domestic violence refuge places; and

— to reintroduce the temporary ban on no fault evictions until there is a meaningful reduction in the numbers of people in emergency accommodation.

Some 13,514 people, including 4,105 children, were officially recorded as being in emergency accommodation funded by the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage in November of last year. As each month passes and these numbers rise, I keep asking myself a question: how much worse does it have to get before this Government accepts that what it is doing to tackle the homelessness crisis is not working and it needs a change of approach?

As the Minister will know, Fine Gael has been in government for 12 years and during that period, the increase in homelessness has been astonishing. Homelessness among all categories of people has gone up by 254%, but child homelessness is up an astonishing 540%. Thousands upon thousands upon thousands of children have been rendered homeless and have been forced to live in emergency accommodation during that period. For a significant period of that time, the Minister was supporting Fine Gael policy as part of a confidence and supply arrangement. Even in the three and a half years this Government has been in power and the Minister has held office, homelessness has gone up by 61% and child homelessness has gone up by 74%.

Those numbers do not begin to express the enormous impact on adults and, in particular, children who are being forced from their homes and into emergency accommodation. Not a day goes by without the Minister telling us about the increase in overall housing output last year, but we are still seeing the homeless numbers rise to the highest levels in modern times. Why? The answer is very simple. It is because the Government's social housing targets are too low, and year after year after year it has been missing them.

In fact, those figures - 13,500 people and 4,000 children - are not reflective of the real level of homelessness. The Minister knows that as well as I do because there are women and children in domestic violence refuges funded by Tusla. There are men and women in hostels that receive no State funding. There are rough sleepers. A growing number of people who have been through the direct provision system, and have been granted leave to remain, are trapped in direct provision and are unable to get out because it is essentially being used as emergency accommodation. When you add all those people up - this is from various Government sources - the actual real level of homelessness is somewhere closer to 20,000. That is before we even start talking about those who are sofa surfing.

If the Minister is to have any chance of meeting the targets in the Lisbon declaration on ending homelessness by 2030, he needs to change. The purpose of tabling this motion today is not only to remind the Minister of his failures to date, but also to set out alternative policy options he could consider. What could he do? He could increase and accelerate the delivery of much-needed social homes. He could raise the targets and meet those raised targets. He could use emergency planning and procurement powers and new building technologies in vacant homes to provide an additional supply of social and affordable homes, specifically targeting groups of people in emergency accommodation, such as the over-55s and families with children. He could double the volume of Housing First tenancies and ensure the entry criteria are more accessible. That would start to tackle the more than 6,000 single people in long-term homelessness. He could accelerate and expand the tenant in situ scheme. I tell him over and over again that the cost-rental tenant in situ scheme still is not working. He knows that. There had been improvements, which we acknowledged, to the social tenant in situ scheme, but it is such a shame the Minister waited such a long time to introduce them, and more can be done.

The Minister could reintroduce the ban on no-fault evictions. I know he is opposed to it, but it is still our view that it should be there. He could also end the practice of institutional investors - vulture funds - buying up homes. Deputy Varadkar said in 2021 that the Government wanted to stop that practice to prevent those funds from buying up family homes and, in some instances, homes that could be used for social or affordable housing, including for families in emergency accommodation.

When it comes to homelessness, of all of the bad policies the Minister has presided over and of all the housing failures for which this Government, the confidence and supply Government and the Fine Gael Government before it are responsible, the astonishingly high levels of homelessness speak for themselves. We urgently need change. I do not expect that the Minister will endorse any of the proposals we have outlined. I do not believe he will do anything differently, and that is ultimately why we need a change of government. I go back to the question I raised at the start: how long does this have to go on for, and how bad does this have to get, before the Minister starts to change? On that basis alone, I commend the motion to the House.

This Government has been in office for nearly four years. The housing crisis is getting worse under the Government, as we heard Deputy Ó Broin outline. Of that there is no question. If soaring rents and rising house prices were not enough for struggling homebuyers to contend with, they are now forced to compete with investment funds that have more financial power than they could ever hope to have. It is a competition they simply cannot win because the rules of the game are rigged against them.

Two weeks ago we learned of an investment fund that snapped up 85% of an entire housing development in Balgriffin, Dublin 17. These were 46 homes that should have been available for workers and families to buy, to live in and to call their own. Instead, what is happening? They are being rented out by an investment fund for more than €3,100 per month. Of course, what happened in Belcamp Manor was not a surprise to us, because it is Government policy. That is the reality of it. The Minister can huff and puff all he wants, but he knows that it is Government policy.

For many years, Sinn Féin has been raising the issue of investment funds snapping up homes from under the feet of struggling homebuyers.

The issue sparked outrage in 2021 when it was revealed that an investment fund had attempted to buy 135 homes at Mullen Park in Maynooth. In response to those events, the housing Minister said we needed to ensure that did not happen and that we would not have first-time buyers competing against large investment funds. He said it was not a situation that anyone could stand over nor indeed that he, as housing Minister, could stand over. This was more huff and more bluff from the Minister for housing because, as we know, it was feigned outrage from a Government which failed to take the necessary action. How do we know that? We warned the Government that the 10% stamp duty it was introducing was simply designed to fail because investment funds would continue to snap up family homes which should be available to first-time purchasers or other purchasers to buy. What has happened since? The Department of Finance told me last week that funds have snapped up 1,200 homes and have paid the 10% stamp duty charge. Some 700 of those homes were in the Minister's city, the capital city of Dublin. The funds have not just got their claws into homes in this city; they are buying up and bulk purchasing in Cork, Carlow, Kildare, Meath, Wicklow, Offaly, Roscommon, Galway, Limerick and Westmeath. That is where they have got their claws in. The Minister then tells us that his measures are working.

As bad as it is that 1,200 properties were bought up and the 10% stamp duty was paid, we know that the funds are buying up far more than that because the Central Statistics Office told us that institutional investors bought up nearly 6,000 homes in 2022. That is the last year for which the office has data. That is 6,000 homes in one year. The Minister stood here last week and said that investor or institutional funds are only buying 1% of the market. If 6,000 homes were sold in this way in 2022, it means that one out of every ten homes is being bought by institutional investors. Some 2,053 of them were actual houses. That is 31% higher than the year before the Government brought in the measure and told us it was going to stop this practice. The Minister stood there and said he could not stand over this practice, but what is the result? The result is that more homes than ever are being bought by vulture funds. More apartments than ever are being bought by vulture funds. More existing homes and more new homes than ever are being bought by these institutional investors. This shows us clearly that the Government is on the side of these investment funds. That is the reality.

It also raises the question of why stamp duty was paid in respect of just 395 of those purchases. Many of them were purchasing less than ten in a given year and getting around it in that way. The reality is that we on this side of the House know which side we are on. We are very clear that we are on the side of ordinary families. We do not stand over the fact that one in ten purchases is being made by institutional investors. These homes should be available on the market for first-time buyers and other struggling purchasers. When we consider the overall approach to the housing crisis of this Government, it is no wonder we have the scandal whereby 13,500 people, including 4,100 children, are now reported as homeless and in emergency accommodation. It is a stain on the consciousness of this country that any child should be without a place they can call home. This is not the Republic we want to build.

The motion today is about concrete action to end the bulk purchase by investment funds of homes which should be available for families to buy, to accelerate the delivery of social and affordable homes, to reintroduce the ban on no-fault evictions and to change Government policy. That is only likely to happen when we have a new government which has ordinary people's interests at heart.

The issue of vulture funds snapping up family homes across this State is an absolute shame on this Government, just as it is a shame that over 4,000 children were in homeless accommodation over the Christmas period. The fact that this has not been mentioned every day by Ministers in this Dáil since it returned is utterly shameful.

Today, I was interested to hear the Taoiseach say he regrets that vulture funds are snapping up family homes. When one listens to those on the Government benches, one would almost think that they are not in government, and that they do not have the power to make changes to make lives better for ordinary families and workers. I remind the Minister that the Government does have such power. Deputy Varadkar is the Taoiseach and Deputy O'Brien is the Minister for housing. If they are not happy about it, they can do something about it. The only reason the Minister moved on this in 2021 was that there was public pressure and the Opposition was putting pressure on the Government.

Last week, the Minister would have seen the announcement by the Minister, Deputy Harris, on student accommodation. The reality is that the announcement, which was made in DCU, was no more than a re-announcement. The student union was wise to the fact and clearly stated the facts in that regard. I will explain what was not included in that re-announcement. The Minister failed to mention the number of vulture funds which have snapped up purpose-built student accommodation. The accommodation funded by these vulture funds is simply and utterly pricing many students and young people out of access to third level education. We have seen in Galway, Cork, Dublin, Limerick and Carlow that purpose-built accommodation is totally out of the reach of ordinary students. We see that students are being priced out of the market when they look for a place to stay in order to access third level education. The Minister is the Minister for housing, so he needs to do something about it.

I have always believed that the very least that people could expect from their government is a roof over their head. To say that the Government is failing in that regard is a profound understatement. At least 13,000 people, including 4,000 children, are without a home. That figure is probably 20,000 when we include all of the shelters in our calculations. The Minister is failing them. What is more is that his Government is beginning to reconcile itself to that fact. At the start of this Dáil term, we had a debate on whether we had a housing emergency. The Government came back and forth, again and again, on whether it was an emergency. It eventually landed and ended up accepting that it was an emergency. The truth is that there has never been an emergency response. Not under the confidence and supply arrangement, and not since the current Minister came into government, has there been an emergency response of the kind that is needed. Every action taken by the Government, even the better ones, was a day late and a dollar short. So much of what the Government is doing is failing completely.

Some of the cases we deal with - I am sure the Minister deals with them too - are absolutely heartbreaking, as are the situations people are facing. These are compounded by the fact that there is very little prospect of things getting any better soon for those people. I will mention some of the people I have spoken to in the past four or five days. There is a man in his 70s who is overstaying just because he is convalescing from a hip operation. He has no idea where he is going to go and he has been on the list for about a year. Another case is of a woman who has still not been assessed for homelessness by a local authority and lives between couch surfing and sleeping in her car with her two children, who are in primary school. Another woman broke down when speaking to me last week because she is now facing homelessness. The father of her two children is already homeless. The only way they can see him, because the homeless accommodation will not facilitate that, is in her house. If she is made homeless, where are they going to see their father? These are the situations that people I have spoken to in the past five or six days are facing. It is the responsibility of the Government. There needs to be an emergency response. There should have been such a response four or six years ago, or probably more than that. I ask the Minister to bring such a response now by increasing the targets, by increasing the provision for Housing First and by dealing with this matter. He must not continue to allow the vulture funds in through the back door.

Last November, there were 13,514 people in emergency accommodation across this State comprising children, young people, families, single people, people with full-time jobs and even a cohort of our elderly people, all with no home to call their own. It is estimated that the real figure is well above that, given the number of people in hostels and rough sleeping, never mind those who are couch surfing or living in overcrowded conditions with family and friends. The trend is only going one way.

We see these figures increasing from year to year, despite being constantly told that progress is being made. It seems that the Government's definition of progress has a completely different meaning from everyone else's understanding of the word.

Since this Government took office, homelessness is up by 61% and child homelessness is up by 74%. Last week we debated the bulk purchasing of new homes by investment funds that are then renting these homes for ridiculous sums of money. Since the Government introduced measures in 2021, some 1,200 homes have been snapped up by these funds and this is also driving rents up. People have no choice but to fork out most of their income on rent. When they cannot pay that kind of money, they end up homeless and around and around it goes. To me, that is a definition of failure, not a definition of progress.

The Minister and his Government need to support this motion. They need to support it for the 4,105 children they have already failed who will be sleeping in emergency accommodation tonight.

The buying up of homes by international vulture funds in Balgriffin is not a new phenomenon. I was in this Chamber in 2021 when a similar-style fund took 121 homes off the market in Bay Meadows in my constituency of Dublin West. That was 121 homes taken out of the reach of any first-time buyer wishing to purchase a family home. Words are important here and I use the word "home" because that is what most normal, hard-working people want to acquire. These funds acquire houses for purely financial greed and have bought over 1,200 in 12 months.

People are looking at housing developments in my constituency, including those in Tyrellstown, Bellingsmore, Hollywoodrath and the Phoenix Park. They are worried about whether they will get a chance to buy one of those, assuming they manage to save the enormous deposit and pay the exorbitant cost. I am out canvassing every single week. There are young people, families and parents. What are they talking about? They are talking about the inability of children and young people to move out and access housing. They did the right thing by getting an education or a trade, going to college, getting a job and saving their money, but they see the chance of buying a home slipping out of their hands every single day.

The Department of Finance revealed that by the end of March 2023, some €21 million in stamp duty had been paid by investment funds bulk-buying 630 homes worth €205 million in less than two years. Department officials admitted the 10% figure is not enough to tackle this problem. Since this Government took office, house prices have risen by 28%, with a first-time buyer in Dublin now needing an income of €127,000 to buy a new home. That is absolutely outrageous. We already know that prices have forced thousands out of the market and that the lack of legislation to protect homes being bought by vulture groups is exacerbating the housing crisis. The Minister knows we need action. He knows the measures he has put in place have failed because his own Department is telling him and because the statistics do not lie. People cannot afford to buy a home in their own city or county.