Written by
Nicole McCarthy & Des Hennelly and first published at Rupture
The industrial
revolution in Britain was the inception of the world of commodification under
capitalism that we know today. Factories equipped with machines, first powered
by water, then the steam engine and coal, began to mass-produce products.
People’s labour time was now directly translated into an hourly fee and
companies were learning how to squeeze the most productivity out of their
labour force. But before anything else, factory owners needed to attract
workers.
In Fossil
Capital, Andreas Malm explains how “[t]he water mill called forth the
regime of factory discipline, which was, when it first appeared, intensely
repugnant to most.” Additionally, the mills were placed near water and away
from city centres which had more people free to labour. To solve the issue,
factory owners ‘financed the construction of hundreds of housing units – many
with attached allotment gardens – a market, a public house and other essential
components of a settlement where workers would be willing to live and stay.’[1]
In Dublin in
the early 20th century, Guinness built hundreds of flats to house their workers
as well as ‘public baths, a market, a public park for workers (the Iveagh
Gardens) and sports and childcare functions’.[2] At the time Dublin had some of
the worst housing in Europe which created conditions for cholera and other
diseases to rapidly spread. Providing housing as well as public baths was a way
for Guinness to guarantee workers had sanitary living conditions which would
ensure their ability to work day in and day out to make profits for the
company. These houses and amenities made working in Guinness a very attractive
option, but it also meant that workers were less likely to strike or
disrupt production because their housing was dependent on their job.
The housing
situation is now so bad - not just here but also in other countries like the
US, Germany, and Spain - that nearly a century later, employers are once again
stepping into the housing market to secure their workforce. The owners of
Educate.ie funded the building of 20 not-for-profit houses to allow them to be
sold to employees for below market value. Google and Facebook are planning to
build affordable housing for their employees in Silicon Valley.[3]
While it might
seem as if Google and Co. are stepping up to cover the gap and helping workers,
in reality, companies providing housing or assisting workers with acquiring
housing leaves us dependent on our employers for our homes. It would mean
workers are likely to feel that they must stay in a job longer than they might
want because it’s their only means of accessing affordable housing. We can’t
leave it to the “good graces” of individual companies to provide us with
quality housing, but neither can we rely on “the market” where housing is built
and sold as a commodity for profit, not an investment in people, community and
society.
Hot
commodity
We hear the
term ‘commodification’ being thrown around to describe the (evil) process that
occurs when capitalism gets its hands on something - like the commodification
of water or even fresh air[4] - but what does it actually mean? It’s quite
simple really. It’s when goods, services, ideas, and even people who have to
work for a living are produced or manipulated as objects of trade, something
you make or invest in solely to sell for profit.
In the case of
people it is our labour-power, our ability to work, what kind of work we can
do, our ‘skillset’, that is moulded and geared towards what the market needs.
And we generally accept that’s okay, with people all the time saying things
like, “why did you study Art History in college, sure what job could you get?"
This production
for exchange value rather than need, creates a market where builders are
looking to use the cheapest possible materials and developers are looking to
buy at the cheapest price and turn over the largest profit possible. We end up
with inflated house prices and sky-high rents, as well as MICA and pyrite
disasters. Not to mention that all too often we may get houses, but end up with
no vital community structures like shops, schools, public transport or creches.
It is genuinely
quite absurd when you stop to consider what the situation actually is.
Capitalism has made something as fundamental as shelter an exclusive virtue
that is only accessible to those who can afford it. With one of us knocking on
the age of 30, still living at home, it is so easy to see examples of how the
housing market is failing nearly half a million[5] ‘young’ people who are in
the same boat.
Where did it
all go wrong?
In a nutshell,
the state stopped building council homes, also known as social housing. Council
homes were constructed by local councils with rents based on income, not the
market. From the early 1930s to the mid-50s, 55 percent of all new houses built
were social housing. By 1961, almost 20 percent of the population was living in
a council house.[6]
Unfortunately,
unlike some other countries in Western Europe like Austria, Ireland stopped
building council homes, so they declined in availability and quality to the
desperate proportions we see today, with 61,880 households on the social
housing waiting list as of November 2020.[7] Instead of investing in social
housing, the Irish government, like the Thatcher government in Britain, went
neoliberal and began relying more and more on the private sector, meaning
private, for-profit developers and builders, to deliver housing. This has had
all the predictable consequences of skyrocketing rents and increased
homelessness.
Meanwhile,
instead of building social housing which would deliver secure housing for
families, the government is funnelling money to private landlords through the
Housing Assistance Payment (HAP). Through this scheme, the government pays rent
to over 57,000 private landlords who continue to control the property and have
the right to evict families.[8]
Without the
option of council homes, more and more people are pushed into the commodified
housing market, where the rich get richer and the poor work themselves to the
bone, trying to avoid becoming homeless. Landlords hold the reins of power,
charging astronomical rents, evicting families at the drop of a hat and
hoarding land till they can make bigger profits on their investments. Workers
are not only held to ransom financially but suffer from the stress and worry of
losing their home.
Vacant homes
With all the
demands to ‘build more housing’ out there and long council housing waiting
lists, you would imagine there’s some shortage of housing. But, actually, there
isn’t a shortage of homes per se. There’s a huge number of vacant houses
- around 183,000, not including the over 60,000 holiday homes that sit empty
for months on end.[9] In fact, Ireland has the 10th highest number of vacant
properties in the world based on the size of our population.[10]
On paper it
appears we already have enough housing for everyone in the state. However, it’s
probably the case that much of the housing is not suitable as is. Beyond the
fact that it’s privately owned and controlled, much of the vacant and unused
housing is also either too expensive, is of poor standard and needs
refurbishing, is too big or small for the needs of the residents, or not in the
area where families need to live to be near to their family and friends. There
is, undoubtedly, a shortage of habitable homes in Dublin and other cities. The
anarchy of the market means there is an oversupply of homes in some areas where
there is little demand for them and an undersupply of affordable homes in
cities.
There have been
(pathetic) attempts to address this issue in government housing plan after
government housing plan. In 2015 there was the Urban Regeneration and Housing
Act which saw the introduction of the vacant site levy. To discourage land
hoarding, owners were charged a 3% levy in 2018 which rose to 7% for 2019. However,
less than a third of the money owed was paid to local authorities in 2019 and
in 2020 less than one percent of the money due was paid! Clearly, people have
realised that nothing is being done to enforce it.[11]
The government
has again tried to address the issue in their budget plans for 2022 the Zoned
Land Tax will replace the Vacant Site Levy in the next two years. This imposes
charges on land that is zoned for housing that remains undeveloped and will
have a three percent tariff by January 2022, if zoned after that date, there
will be a charge after 3 years. The big difference with this tax is that the
responsibility for collection lies with Revenue. The previous levy collected
just €21,000 of €11.8 million deemed to be owed to local authorities.[12] The
Vacant Site Levy has been such a disaster that whatever happens with the Zoned
Land Tax is probably going to seem like a huge success in comparison.
Clearly a tiny
tax that the state doesn’t really enforce won’t do it. We need compulsory
acquisition and refurbishment of vacant units, reduction of rents to actually
affordable levels - with affordability defined as a percentage of income - and
ultimately, we’ll need to expropriate corporate landlords that are sitting on
empty luxury apartments biding their time while people are literally dying in
the streets.
Additionally,
population growth will mean that even if we seized all the vacant properties
tomorrow, we’d still need around 35,000 new homes a year. But, left to “the
market” this housing will continue to be priced out of reach for the majority
of people. It’s also likely to continue the trend of build cheap and sell dear,
regardless of what people need, including rapid reductions in emissions and
ecosystem destruction.
Concrete
emissions
So what is the
environmental cost of a new house? Well, that depends on how the homes are
built, with what materials, how far those materials have to be transported, in
what manner are they built (one off or by the thousands), and whether they are
near or far from public transport. All of these factors will determine the
environmental impact not only during construction, but also for our overall
society.
Let’s start
with materials used to build the home. In Ireland, most homes are made of
concrete. Concrete, if you didn’t know, produces a lot of carbon emissions.
Globally, more than four billion tonnes of cement are created annually, which
produces about eight per cent of global CO2 emissions.[13] If the cement
industry were a country, they would be the third-biggest CO2 polluter in the
world with up to 2.8bn tonnes.
A huge amount
of attention has been raised about the problems with plastic which is, of
course, good. At least in the way plastic is talked about nowadays, you could
nearly say there’s a war on plastic. However, the cement industry creates more
carbon emissions every two years than the eight billion tonnes of plastic bags
created over the last 60 years. So, why is there no war on cement? Why are we
not hearing about the pollution it causes and how society should avoid
it?
Cement is
responsible for a tenth of the world’s industrial water use. It creates
extremely hot cities and exacerbates respiratory diseases.[14] An abundance of
concrete also prevents the soil from absorbing rainfall, creating toxic runoff
into our rivers and streams and eventually into our oceans. To top it off,
“[i]t also puts a crushing weight on the ecosystems that are essential for
human wellbeing.”[15] Why in the world are we still using it to build
houses?!
The Irish Green
Building Association warned that “Ireland’s new home construction programme
will result in huge ‘embodied carbon’ emissions if we continue to build houses
in the way we currently do.” These ‘embodied carbon’ emissions are those
emanating ‘...from mining, quarrying, transporting and manufacturing building
materials, in addition to the construction activities created’.[16]
There are
several other options on offer that are far more sustainable than concrete. For
example recycled plastics, hempcrete (hemp fibres mixed with lime and water
create a concrete-like material), bamboo, clay and ashcrete (ash is a
by-product of coal combustion that is otherwise discarded into landfills) to
name a few.[17] Although these methods are more eco-friendly than traditional
cement, their widespread use is blocked by a system focused on profit and
cutting costs wherever it can.
The most
eco-friendly way to tackle the housing crisis is to reuse and repurpose as many
existing materials as possible, but builders will rely on new concrete because
it is cheaper and easier to use. In other words, we can’t just leave it to the
market, to the developers and builders who seek profit above all else, to
decide.
Suburban
sprawl
We also can’t
rely on developers to build communities in a way that reduces our overall
carbon emissions and environmental impact. Neither can we expect people to not
build a home until the state steps in and actually plans community development.
Spatial planning - where homes are built, how close they are to shops,
workplaces, and public transport - affects community building and it largely
determines household and transport emissions.
Don't get us
wrong. It is common to hear of those who have this escape plan from capitalism
in the back of their minds - a small plot of land, an eco-friendly dwelling and
a little vegetable patch.This is a dream for lots of people who want to
disengage from our profit driven society eating away at our souls and our
precious environment.
It’s not just
the housing we want and need. As human beings we have social needs too. We want
to be part of a community, a group of like minded individuals that we can share
our space and resources with. And that’s the thing. It’s really hard to build a
community with proper services if people are living spread out, building on
whatever land they can afford in a one-off dwelling or living in one of
Dublin’s sprawling American-style suburbs because that’s what was cheapest for
the developer.
Every community
needs public transport, libraries, shops, post deliveries, community centres,
parks, schools and doctors surgeries. We can’t achieve that, nor the urgent
reductions in emissions we so desperately need under the current system of
build where you can in whatever way is cheapest and letting “the market”
dominate. We also have to demand the rapid phasing out of concrete and
for better spatial planning that fosters small village style community
development and the withering away of car dependence.
Traveller
accommodation
Let’s also
remember that not all who live in Ireland want a “traditional” home. The
material and cultural needs of the Traveller community must be planned for as
well, including the importance of horse ownership and space for larger
families.[18]
Shamefully, six
years after the Carrickmines tragedy, councils have still completely failed to
provide Traveller-specific housing. Two thirds of the money allocated for
Traveller housing between 2008 and 2018 wasn’t even used.[19] The excuses are
many, but none of them change the reality that councils are criminally failing
a minority community that is all too often on the receiving end of racism and
discrimination.
Just to give a
recent and horrific example, in Limerick racist messages were spray painted
onto a house a Traveller family was due to move into. This family was then
faced with potential homlessness and the constant fear for their lives as
locals threatened to burn the house down if the Traveller family moved in.
Unfortunately, Travellers rights activists explain that this is not an isolated
incident. Traveller families are often on the receiving end of hate crimes.[20]
Every single
person needs a home. We cannot allow Travellers to fight alone for their
specific housing needs nor allow the councils off the hook for failing to meet them.
We demand housing for all who live here and specific for each community’s
cultural needs.
What about cost
rental?
Vienna is one
of the most affordable major cities in the world and also ranks high in terms
of quality of life surveys.[21] To ensure there is plenty of quality housing,
the city builds at least 7,000 council homes a year.[22] Over 60% of the
population live in state-built accommodation. They utilise a cost rental scheme
whereby housing is rented out based on covering the cost of building and
maintenance, not private profits for the developers and individualised gains
for landlords. Rent in Vienna for one of these social houses is individually
assessed, based on your income. No one pays more than a third of their income
for housing.[23]
Looking at
Vienna’s cost-rental model, Dublin County councils have plans for 440
cost-rental dwellings to be built in the coming months, due to grow to 2,000 by
2023.[24] The aim is to use cost-rental schemes to provide housing to those who
are just above the threshold for social housing but are unable to obtain a
mortgage.
However, the
cost rental they’re proposing is different from Vienna’s in one significant
way. Rents are not based on cost alone nor income. Government rules mandate
that rent must be least 25% below market prices,[25] which still maintains rent
as a function of the market, not the cost of building and maintenance nor your
income
What are we
fighting for?
Imagine that
you, and all of your loved ones, have access to a home that will never cost
more than one third of your income, regardless of what you earn. This home is
near local forest-parks filled to the brim with native trees, bees, birds of
all kinds, foxes, badgers, red squirrels, and pine martens. It’s connected to a
network of forest-parks across the country, so sometimes we see wolves and wild
boar.
Shops with
beautifully crafted products are within walking distance; so are the schools
and creches, with ample spaces for all of the local children. Libraries, shared
work spaces, and a community centre with activities that suit all age groups
are also nearby. A community kitchen with nutritious and free food available to
all is open for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The small farms nearby supply it
with fresh vegetables and fruit, and the fishers come once a month to bring
mussels. Work isn’t too far away. You can get there using the cycling network
or hop on the 24-hour free, frequent and fast public transport powered by solar
energy.
All of this
sounds like a dream, a utopia. But it’s possible if workers, Travellers, small
farmers and fishers were in control of planning our housing and our
communities.
More than six
out of ten Irish people believe that the right to housing should be in the
Constitution, with more than 80% agreeing that housing is a basic human right.
However, a constitutional right to housing alone would not solve the current
crisis and probably wouldn’t force the government’s hand to build more publicly
owned social housing. We need to consider the bigger picture and demand more than
a right to housing on paper. Decommodifying and democratising housing is a
vital demand for any housing movement that wants to see long-term, meaningful,
and ecologically sustainable change.
“Not My Home”
The housing crisis pushed me to live in the countryside. I, like most others, could not afford the rate at which rental prices were increasing. I was lucky to find a nice property to rent in a beautiful location but it is hundreds of kilometres from my family and closest friends. This means I have increased fuel and car maintenance costs and additional emissions as there are simply no public transport options available.
I have no choice but to drive everywhere, even to get milk. I do love it here but it is not my home, it is someone else’s and would not be suitable for a partner and child to live in with me. It is a place where I feel I have dignity and privacy, in a city I know I would likely be sharing a place with much less space and of much, much lower quality.
At my age, I would feel uncomfortable living as I did as a student but I count myself extremely lucky given the unconscionable conditions students have been forced to live in during the last decade. It is hugely disheartening to see so many abandoned properties, both domestic and commercial, often being left roofless for perverse taxation benefits.
It is equally disheartening to see very large
modern properties spring up in the landscape as those with significant wealth
build more empty holiday homes. The community spirit, the ability to get to
know your neighbours and the ability for my generation and those coming after
me to put down roots is being lost here.
Notes
1. Andreas
Malm, Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global
Warming (London, 2016).
2. Mark
Keenan, ‘Home truth: Philanthropic housing has long been used to control
working classes’, Irish Independent, September 20 2019,
https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/home-truth-philanthropic-housing-has-long-been-used-to-control-working-classes-38516036.html
3. Sarah Kieran,
‘Building homes for employees: what we can learn from an old idea’, RTE News,
Tuesday, 19 Jan 2021, https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2021/0119/1190626-building-homes-for-employees-what-we-can-learn-from-an-old-idea/
4. Vikram
Barhat, ‘The entrepreneurs making money out of thin air’, BBC News, 16th May
2017, https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20170515-the-entrepreneurs-making-money-out-of-thin-air
5.
Michelle Hennessy, ‘Factfind: How many adults under 30 are still living at home
with their parents’, The Journal, Feb 2nd 2020,
https://www.thejournal.ie/factfind-under-living-with-parents-4981426-Feb2020/
6. Social
Justice Ireland, ‘MORE THAN 1 IN 4 HAP TENANCIES NOT SUSTAINABLE WHILE REAL
SOCIAL HOUSING NEED UP 33%’, 16 June 2021,
7. Ibid
8.
Central Statistics Office, ‘Social Housing in Ireland 2019 - Analysis of
Housing Assistance Payment (HAP) Scheme’, 18 November 2020, https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-hhwl/socialhousinginireland2019-analysisofhousingassistancepaymenthapscheme/
9.
Central Statistics Office, ‘Census of Population 2016 - Preliminary Results’, https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-cpr/censusofpopulation2016-preliminaryresults/housing/
10. Eoin
Burke-Kennedy, ‘Research shows 183,312 of State’s housing stock are classified
as vacant’, The Irish Times, Oct 25, 2021, Ireland
has 10th highest rate of vacant homes in the world, study finds
(irishtimes.com)
11.
Cormac Fitzgerald, ‘What is - and isn't - being done about Ireland's 180,000
vacant and derelict buildings’, The Journal, Jun 28th 2021,
12. John Kilraine, ‘New
tax on land hoarding to replace Vacant Site levy’ RTE News, 12th Oct 2021, https://www.rte.ie/news/budget-2022/2021/1012/1253227-housing/
13.
Johanna Lehne & Felix Preston, ‘Making Concrete Change: Innovation in
Low-carbon Cement and Concrete’, Chatham House Report, 13th JUNE 2018,
14. Jonathan Watts,
‘Concrete: the most destructive material on Earth’, The Guardian, 25th February
2019,
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/feb/25/concrete-the-most-destructive-material-on-earth
15. Ibid
16.
‘Irish Green Building Council call for immediate, drastic action on climate
change’, Irish Construction News, 10th August 2021,
https://constructionnews.ie/2021/08/10/irish-green-building-council-call-for-immediate-drastic-action-on-climate-change/
17. Ayushi Desai,
‘5 Green substitutes for concrete’, Rethinking the Future,
https://www.re-thinkingthefuture.com/rtf-fresh-perspectives/a1825-5-green-substitutes-for-concrete/
18.
Ailbhe Conneely, ‘Reports find €58m allocated for Traveller accommodation
not drawn down’, RTE News, 14th Jul 2021,
19. Ibid
20. Ryan
O’ Rourke, ‘Activists say Travellers face violence and threats all over the
country’, Irish Examiner, 12th October 2021, https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/munster/arid-40719279.html
21.
‘Vienna's Radical Idea? Affordable Housing For All’, Bloomberg Quicktake,17
September 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41VJudBdYXY
22. Ibid
23. Conor
@TILT, ‘Vienna, the City of Social Housing. Cost Rental in Ireland.’, Affinity,
30th October 2021,
https://www.tiltaffinity.com/blog/social-housing-cost-rental-ireland/
24. Jane
Moore, ‘Explainer: Ireland got its first cost-rental homes today - but how
exactly do they work?’, The Journal, Jul 7th 2021, https://www.thejournal.ie/what-is-cost-rental-model-housing-5487974-Jul2021/
25. Jack Horgan-Jones, ‘Cost-rental scheme to be open to households earning up to €82,000’, The Irish Times, August 16th 2021, https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/cost-rental-scheme-to-be-open-to-households-earning-up-to-82-000-1.4647836
