Time for action on housing crisis

HOUSING PROVISIONS A Mayo County Council housing scheme in Aughagower in 2007. A dramatic reduction in the provision of social housing in the last ten years has heightened the current housing crisis. Pic: Neill O’Neill

The in-depth analysis of the housing situation in Westport and throughout the county by this newspaper lays bare the extend of the housing crisis on a local level.
It is becoming nigh on impossible for people to buy or rent in Westport unless they are drawing a very lucrative wage.
Westport is where the issue is at its worst – in 2020 property prices there were 58 percent higher than the county average – but the issue permeates all over Mayo.
Whether it be a lack of affordable housing, by which we mean state supported builds, or planning issues for self-builds, people are finding it increasingly difficult to find a place to call home.
It is a situation which has drawn to an inevitable conclusion by the actions – or lack thereof – of the Government and local authorities across the past 20 years.
From 2000 to 2010, Mayo County Council built 957 houses. In the ten years that followed, that figure was a scarcely credible 174.
Right now in Mayo there are 1,100 people on the social housing waiting list. Is it any wonder with that level of inaction in the past decade?
The council appear to be trying to turn a corner. Their Director of Services for Housing Tom Gilligan told The Mayo News that they expect to deliver 90 social housing units in 2022 and are aiming to deliver 1,004 social houses by the end of 2026.
That’s considerably higher than the target asked of them under the Government’s Housing for All plan, where their minimum target is 730 units.
But a lack of affordable housing is a particular problem too.
Working couples who want to own their home are being caught in an increasingly sizeable wedge between the income level that qualifies them for affordable housing and the incomes financial institutions are demanding they earn in order to qualify for a mortgage.
It is, for some, proving a disincentive to work.
Westport-based Cllr Christy Hyland has brought up repeatedly the amount of people he has received representations from who have found themselves between this rock and a hard place, earning too much to qualify for affordable housing but not near enough to get a mortgage.

Airbnb issues
The problem has been exacerbated in Westport by the huge volumes of properties which are now available for short-term Airbnb rents and, as a consequence, off the market for long-term lets. The demand remains the same, the supply has constricted hugely so the cost of long-term rents have skyrocketed.
As pointed out in these pages, there were only three properties in Westport available for long-term rent on Daft.ie some weeks ago yet 337 Airbnb listings.
You cannot blame any homeowners who go down the Airbnb route. It is far more lucrative and often involves much less hassle.
But, similar to the lack of social and affordable housing, it is indicative of a wider problem and that is a laissez-faire attitude by the State around housing.
For too long they’ve let the market control housing and not intervened near as much as they ought to have.
From how NAMA was allowed to operate to the lack of social builds to the lack of regulations around Airbnb, is it any wonder we are where we are?
Speaking as someone who grew up in a council estate, Westport’s Fr Angelus Park, Deputy Michael Ring knows this issue better than most.
He was an urban district councillor as far back as 1979 and saw the local council build and develop a wide array of social housing estates.
That level of intervention was allowed to grind to a halt for too long since the turn of the millennium. He’s calling for a state agency to take over from local authorities to provide social and affordable housing.
Perhaps. But what has to change fundamentally is the will to get it done. The housing issue has been a talking shop for far too long.
However they implement it, the Government of the present and Governments of the future need to invest year on year in the provision of social and affordable housing.
The time for talking is over.