Bríd Smith: Calls for Rent Controls as Market Fuels Housing Crisis

Your intervention there, Minister, is really totally illogical. You've just said that your interventions in housing were targeted, legally sound, timely and effective. Is that why when polled and asked, the majority of people in the country say housing for them is the number one issue? Because you've been so successful at your targeting, your legally sound legislation, your timeliness and your effectiveness. It doesn't add up. There's a theme in this government that any alternative proposed by the opposition is a fantasy, unrealistic, unworkable and at worst is not politically real or serious. Unlike of course the great statesmen and women of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. And I want to argue that there is a phrase, you may well have heard it, Tina, T-I-N-A, there is no alternative. It was something Margaret Thatcher used frequently years ago. No alternative to capitalism, no alternative to the market, no alternative to mass unemployment, to devastation of people's living conditions. And I believe that your politics are the children, you and your deputies are the children of Thatcher's politics. The political and economic view that says that we cannot interfere in the market or in the needs of the corporations to make profits. But we want to say loudly and clearly today there is an alternative. There must be, because whether it's the housing or the health crisis or the climate crisis, the market is not the answer. It is in fact often the cause of the crisis. There is an alternative and there must be for the 60,000 plus renters who are spending more than 30% of their income on rents. For those in Dublin who routinely spend more than 60% of their income on rents. For the 300,000 plus in private rental accommodation dreading the next rent hike or a possible eviction notice. A proposal to reduce by law the rents inflicted on people may be greeted by you and your deputies in Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael with faints and gasps of horror that the opposition are absolutely illiterate. and we are told will drive the poor else suffering landlords out of the market. It is odd when daily we are told that they are already exiting the market at a time of historically high rents. You might need smelling salts when you try to rubbish this proposal. Horror of horrors we want to set rents by interfering with the market. In 2016 we did propose a law that would set up fair rents, ban increases and reduce them by linking them to income. A year later the Fine Gael led government at the time brought in the rent pressure zones. What happened? Total failure. We have repeatedly brought proposals to ban evictions during the housing crisis. Widespread fainting and gasping by government. And risks of destruction of the market like we are told again this morning. In 2020 the Dáil itself legislated to ban evictions during the Covid crisis. And hello news flash to you Minister, the sky did not fall in. And the deputies opposite said we cannot interfere in the market. You can improve the lives of people in this country. You can interfere with the rights of private property and the rights of profit. And guess what? The earth will keep spinning. But what may happen, what should happen, is that life becomes a little better, a little bit less unequal for tens of thousands of people. The world does not end with rent reductions or rent controls. This is not 1980. This is not the era of Thatcher or Reagan. We can intervene the market and we must do so. Especially when it is inflicting such huge misery and poverty on the people of this state. This proposal will only appear revolutionary to you because you have a limited way in which you place the corporate landlords and their profits at the heart of what society does in the housing crisis. We do not allow the provision of education to be determined by the market, nor should we. We do not allow access to life saving medical care to be determined by the market, although we do to a certain extent. But here the right to access decent shelter and accommodation is being determined by the private sector and the market. Enshrined in the laws of this state that rent should be set and guided by the market. We have to demystify the market. The market rents are not what people can afford, it is not about what people can voluntarily contribute, it is what landlords can extract. Because unlike other products whose prices are determined by the choices people make, people have no other choice. They need shelter, they need it as a basic form of being able to live. Rents have increased by 76% in the last 12 years because they can. This is a housing crisis that the state has failed to provide decent public housing for its people and the private rental market has forced up those rents and extracted every penny it can from ordinary decent workers. While rents have gone up by 76% in 12 years, what has happened to wages? Well, the government and the minister would attack with Lee any group of workers that would put in a pay demand for 76%. You would say they are going to wreck the economy, they are going to bring down the state. You would talk about treason and holding the state to ransom. But when workers demand a pay rise of 10%, let alone 70% or 80%, they are lectured on the perilous state of the country's finances and told sternly that the government could not give in to such blackmail. But there is no issue at all for the TDs and the opposite benches if Iris Reit or Hibernia or some corporate landlord boost their investor profits and expect returns that are multiples of that sum. No problem with profits or rents that hit the stratosphere. In the 12 years when rents have risen by 76%, landlords have crammed people into sheds, corridors and double beds with strangers. When state subsidies of private landlords by HAP, Rent Supplement and RAS has hit 1 billion annually. When stories of sites being advertised for sex for rent are commonplace. We have not seen a single substantial or real improvement in tenants' rights or securities of tenure. What has happened elsewhere? Did wages rise by 26%? According to the CSO, in the last 12 years, average industrial wages have risen by 12%. Did welfare rise by 76%? Not at all. According to social protection, welfare has risen by 10% over the last decade. So what is so mystical about rents that the thought of controlling them linked to people's actual earnings evokes such a visceral reaction from you Minister and TDs in the opposite benches. We need to provide decent public housing administered and linked to rents of people's income to what workers can actually afford. And this bill is more realistic, more grounded, more based on real life than the ideology posing as real politic that I hear from the government and their supporters. One estimate in Dublin says that a person, a single person trying to rent would need a net income per month of €6,574. That is over €100,000 gross a year. You are the real fantasies when you think that that is a realistic option for the vast majority of workers today or that the centre can hold when the centre is based on that sort of a rental market. It is an interesting question as to why the crisis has happened and you have answered in various ways and did not manage to mention the war in Ukraine. However, the Fianna Fáilers sometimes like to say it is because they had to make very tough and brave decisions back when they decided to bail out the banks. You often like to blame Fianna Fáil. Or it could have been when the Labour Party and Fianna Gael changed the laws to lure in REITs and vulture funds with promises of tax breaks. Or it could have been when Fianna Fáil rewrote the tax laws to allow various fugitives and exiles to rest their money here. Or was it when they stopped building public housing? The simple answer is to really explain the housing crisis is that it is not really a crisis, it is policy. The very definite thought out result of political, economic and social decisions taken by Fianna Fáil and Fianna Gael over the decades in order to placate the corporate sector. The profits are not an unintended consequence of housing policy, they are an intended consequence of commodifying houses, of changing laws to lure in investors and halting and denigrating public housing. We have consequences of policies that are entirely predicted by the politics of Fianna Fáil and Fianna Gael with their occasional little mates in Labour or the Green Party. And that is 10,000 people plus in emergency accommodation, tens of thousands on social housing list, another 60,000 in receipt of HAP or state support to have shelter tonight. These are victims of an entirely planned, thought out economic and social policy. And if they are allowed to continue, the future disaster awaiting the next generation is also foreseeable. The ERSI recently looked over the hill and were able to tell us that for those aged 44 to 55 currently renting, the future is absolutely dire. It will be insecure, unaffordable accommodation when they near retirement, unable to carry the burden of renting. Home ownership rate is dropping and if we continue down this road, the adults in this room, you and your fellow TDs, will be responsible for the failed policies that will deliver insecure rented accommodation, leaving tens of thousands of ordinary people and pensioners prey to the market and the whims of the corporate landlords just to have shelter in their own age. That is the future. And unless we challenge it, unless we challenge the logic of the market and those who kneel before it like it was some god, we are in for big trouble for future generations. I will just remind you, Minister, we live in a society, not a market. And society needs shelter and decent accommodation as a basic right for all its people. Thanks Deputy Smith. Thank you. Thank you. My name is Daniel. I will say to you thank you.