Bríd Smith: Calls housing crisis a 'catastrophe' and defends tenants
Bríd Smith criticised the government's handling of the housing crisis, calling it a catastrophe and disputing claims that extending the eviction moratorium would have made matters worse. She highlighted the case of Tathany House in her constituency, where 15 of 34 tenancies remain and tenants face a due eviction date of 2 June while the landlord refuses to engage with Dublin City Council.
Main argument
She accused Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael of decades of neglect in providing public housing, leaving provision to private developers, landlords, banks, estate agents and vulture funds. She said local authorities have been effectively gutted and social housing limited to those on very low incomes. Smith argued that proposals such as effective rent controls, compulsory purchase of vacant and derelict sites and measures to stop land hoarding have repeatedly been dismissed by the government as unconstitutional.
Eviction moratorium questioned
Smith challenged repeated assertions from the Taoiseach and the minister that continuing the eviction moratorium would make the situation worse, saying the government has never provided causal evidence for that claim. She urged the government to produce proof rather than rely on repeated statements.
Tathany House eviction case
She described Tathany House in Bow Lane, Kilmainham, where 34 tenancies once existed and 15 families remain, including migrant workers, a hospital worker and her four-year-old daughter, and a lung cancer patient receiving chemotherapy at James' hospital. Dublin City Council has agreed to approach the landlord to seek purchase of the complex, but the landlord has not responded to calls, emails or letters. Tenants say they will not leave on the due eviction date of 2 June to avoid homelessness.
Solidarity action and government questions
Smith said a solidarity demonstration will take place this Saturday outside Tathany/Tahini House, joined by the controversial artist Spice Bag, musicians, local residents, political parties and campaigning housing groups to demand action. She asked what consequences the government will impose on landlords who refuse to engage and suggested disincentives such as planning restrictions to prevent conversion of housing into apart-hotels. She also said she will follow up on another family who have been 15 months in a hotel room to highlight the wider human cost of the crisis.
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For Margaret, I guess you could have a bog-standard speech stashed away in your filing cabinet or in your computer that you pull out at least once a week as we deal with this housing catastrophe because there will be and will continue to be bills and motions and proposals coming from the opposition to the government in private members' time to try and highlight and deal with what is an absolute catastrophe. Both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have for decades neglected the provision of public housing and public lands and have left the provision of the country's housing needs in the hands of private developers, builders, landlords, financial interest groups, banks, estate agents, real estate agents, vulture funds, cuckoo funds. They have effectively gutted local authorities and have left social housing in the very limited situations available to people on incomes so low that they could never afford to rent and particularly not the skyrocketing rents that we see around our cities and towns now. When we on this side of the House make concrete and rational proposals to try and deal with various aspects of the crisis that flow from these policies, we are always told by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael and experts and possibly legal advice that we do not know where it comes from, that our suggestions would be unconstitutional as they would interfere with the rights of private property. This excuse was used for our proposal for effective rent controls, for the compulsory purchasing of vacant and derelict sites and policies to stop land hoarding by the developers. The housing crisis has moved from being a crisis to being a disaster and now, I would argue, a catastrophe. Month after month, we are being told by the government they are delivering record levels of housing, social housing, etc. But it is a joke, except it is not a funny joke, that everything that gets blamed for the housing crisis, from the war to inflation, masks that they are not delivering affordable and social homes. Behind the rhetoric, we see that the house building programme has not in any way been significantly ramped up, not like it was in the 30s, 40s and 50s and even in the 70s in this country. We are now one of the richest countries on the planet and we do not seem to be able to give people the basic provision that they need in the world. The world is a nest where you have your young and rear them, even the birds and the animals have a right to that and they get it. People do not, not in Ireland. I just want to take the minister up on something, but I think you have said it as well, minister, that the continuation of the eviction moratorium would make a difficult situation even worse. It has been repeated time and time again by the Taoiseach, yourself and the minister who has just left, that this would be the case. But you have never proved it. You have never given us the causation for that and how it can be proved. But just say it, like somebody says their prayers in the morning or says good day to people that they pass on the street. You just say it, but you never actually prove the claim that the continuation of the moratorium on victims would have made the crisis worse. Someday I hope that you will try, at least try, to give us the evidence for that statement. I want to spend the last few minutes talking about Tathany House, because in my constituency and some of my friends lived there. Out of the 34 tenancies that were in Tathany House, 15 are left. Others have gone, some of them back to their own countries of origin. A lot of them were migrant workers, including a hospital worker and her four-year-old daughter, who is still there. A lung cancer patient who is receiving chemotherapy in James' hospital nearby, he is still there. They have worked hard to put pressure on DCC to buy the complex. It is a small enough complex in Bow Lane in Kilmainham, but it does have 15 families still living in it. DCC have finally agreed to approach the landlord to look to purchase the home. They have been doing so for the last couple of weeks, but guess what? The landlord is not responding. The landlord is not responding. We do not know why, because he is not responding to calls, emails, letters, nothing. But the tenants have decided, the 15 families that are left, that no matter what, they have no choice but to stay, because they are not going to put themselves into homelessness. They want the landlord to realise that he must respond to the council. Here is a big question for this government. What are and what will be the consequences for landlords, like that landlord in Tahini House, who refuse to engage? When the government has said that they will try to purchase properties back, and in this case it is a multiple tenancy property, he refuses to engage and rather would make the tenants homeless. Is there no compulsion for landlords to engage with local authorities? It seems that there is not. If so, if not, should there not be a disincentive for the landlords, for example, to try to sell that block of housing onto an apart hotel, for example, and have restrictions on planning for sites that are only free, because dozens of people have been made homeless for them. No fault evictions of 15 families from a place like Tahini House. The due eviction date is 2 June, and the tenants have said they will not be leaving on that date. This Saturday we will be joined by the controversial but very successful artist Spice Bag, who did the very controversial painting around an illegal eviction recently. He will join us outside Tahini House, as will musicians, local residents from Dublin 8, political parties and campaigning housing groups. We will all come together to show solidarity with those families and to demand that something is done to deal with this crisis. We cannot see those families being moved into situations like another family who I am dealing with, and I will be personally back to you about it, who are 15 months in a hotel room, a 19-year-old girl, a 15-year-old young woman, a 15-year-old autistic boy, a 5-year-old autistic boy and a 2-year-old baby girl who is now being told by the doctors is underdeveloped. Why wouldn't she be? She has nowhere to crawl, she has nowhere to go, she has nowhere to play. The father suffers from depression, he is suicidal because he blames himself that he cannot provide a nest for his children. Fifteen months later they are still there. In any society that would be regarded as inhumane, unacceptable, disgraceful, and that is exactly what it is. It is a consequence of the housing policy of this Government and that is why the families in Tahini House refuse to go. They do not want to live like that, Minister. Can you blame them? They cannot live like that, even if they were fortunate enough to be able to get one room in a hotel, a very low-class hotel, I must add. One room in a hotel for the multiple elements of their family, the mammy and daddy, the baby, the young boy, the young girl, whatever. Something has to be done and something is not being done by this Government. You have your heads in the sand and you are refusing to look to the one method of housing that did work, could work again in this country, where public housing is built on public land, not for profit by public housing companies. You have stripped the local authorities of the ability to do that. You could build a local authority building company that works not for profit and do it on a scale that we did when this country was on its knees and had nothing. Now we have a surplus of £10 billion this year and a possible £18 billion next year. What the hell are we like? But it is down to use to make the changes. All we can do is come back week after week, shout and roar and get down to the likes of Tiny House and show real solidarity and support for people who will resist evictions.
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