Government claims to have ramped up delivery of social housing “ring hollow” with only 2885 Local authority homes delivered in 2022 while 120,000 households rot on the housing lists and evictions set to spiral.
Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett TD for People Before Profit has slammed the latest figures released by the Department of Housing showing the actual number of Local Authority houses delivered in 2022 is only 2885, with as few as only 546 in all four Dublin local authorities and a shocking figure of only 2 in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown.
Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett said:
“It is just shocking that in the year when the housing crisis moved to a disaster and then a catastrophe, and when the government claimed month after month that they were delivering record levels of social housing, it now turns out that the output of Local Authority homes is only 2885 and more than half the local authorities built less than 100 homes.
“In the four Dublin local authorities, where the housing crisis is at its most severe, only 546 new council homes were delivered. In my area, Dún Laoghaire Rathdown, where there are over 5000 households on the various housing waiting lists, we see an utterly shocking figure of only 2 new council houses built. This is a shameful failure of truly epic proportions. Even when the numbers of social homes delivered by Approved Housing Bodies and the Part V process are included, the grand total of homes delivered in the county is only 209.
“Behind all the recent rhetoric of the government claiming that social housing delivery had dramatically ramped up in the second half of 2022, this is the stark reality of a shameful government failure to actually increase the output of state provided social housing in any significant way.
“These shocking figures expose even further the real context in which the government has taken the cruel decision to lift the eviction ban, which will result in thousands of households being evicted from their homes, and when the state has failed utterly to provide them with anywhere to go in terms of additional council housing provision.
“These figures confirm why the government must immediately reinstate the eviction ban and why, in addition, they must now introduce the sorts of radical measures People Before Profit have long been calling for, such as the establishment of a state construction company, meaningful rent controls, ‘use it or lose it’ provisions on vacant property, and a dramatic increase of the Part V social and affordable requirement on new developments from the current 20% to at least 50%.”
ENDS
