|
The
Housing Executive published last week a report entitled
“Northern Ireland Housing Market Review”.
According to its findings, 31,600 (5% of) homes in
Northern Ireland are unfit to live in. However, if
one applies the Decent Home Standard (introduced in
England and Wales earlier this year), 150,000 properties
fall short of this standard. This shows that there
is a clear problem with housing in the North. Not
only is there a problem with properties, but there
are increasing problems for people to find somewhere
to live. The number of households listed as being
homeless has increased by 12 percent since 2001, half
are single and two thirds are men. Almost half of
the 27,000 people waiting for housing allocation are
in housing stress compared to around 10,500 in March
2001. (Belfast Telegraph, 13 December 2002)
If the report presents interesting facts and figures,
it fails to ask the question: who benefits from this
situation, and who loses?
As
everybody knows, the price of homes has dramatically
increased in the North for the last eight years or
so. The average cost of a house now stands at £82,152.
Property firms are making huge profits, while the
Housing Executive warns of an increasing affordability
problem in some part of Belfast and elsewhere. If
no resistance is shown by the people to those property
firms, we might end up like round Dublin where property
prices have blown out of proportion! When people find
it difficult to buy a house, they (especially if they
do not have a family) will have to rent. And the Landlords
will find there an opportunity to artificially increase
the rents. To deal with the housing problem, local
authorities will build social housing. The above-mentioned
report estimates that around 1,500 properties are
required annually to meet the rising demand. But all
this is delayed and made more difficult by the speculators
who will increase land prices. At the same time, when
ordinary people required badly needed housing, luxury
apartments are being built up all over the place for
the needs of the most privileged sections of the population.
The
situation is already bad enough, but it is our responsibility
to organise to prevent it from deteriorating further.
Young families looking for a home, individuals forced
to live in sordid shared accomodations, old people
finding the winter difficult because their home is
substandard, all those have no objective interest
in maintaining the current system, they have everything
to gain from radically transforming it. Property firms,
estate agents, speculators and landlords: all benefit
from the current organisation of housing provision,
and have everything to loose from a system in which
housing is allocated according to needs, not profits.
The interests of those two groups are antagonistic.
But to change the current situation, people must organise
themselves. A policy of rent controls, regulation
of land prices, the immediate introduction of the
Decent Home Standard and an associated implementation
policy, the seizure of empty properties for people
badly in need of housing; all those could be elements
of a platform proposed by Republican Socialists to
mobilise the people. Those of no property have nothing
to lose but their slumbers…
Index: Current Articles + Latest News and Views + Book Reviews +
Letters + Archives
|
