Ireland’s Housing Led Approach to Homelessness: The Way Home or a Path to Nowhere?

EUROPEAN RESEARCH CONFERENCE

Housing First. What’s Second?

Berlin, 20th September 2013

Ireland’s Housing-led Approach to Homelessness:

The way home or path to nowhere?

Dr. Dáithí Downey,

Deputy Director, Head of Policy and Service Delivery,

Dublin Region Homeless Executive.




Ireland’s ‘housing-led’ homeless policy turn

February 2013 What’s next…

1. At local level? Dublin’s Housing First

Demonstration Project

within the context of

housing-led policy turn

2. At national level? Ireland’s omni-crisis and the

great Irish housing disaster

Challenges, opportunities, prospects




The 2013 policy turn…

Housing-led approach to effective resolution of

homelessness:

Cost-effectiveness: “better use of scarce resources” to move away from emergency and shelter type accommodation

Recognition of lack of provision and access to “adequate, sustainable and affordable housing” as a “root cause of homelessness”

Housing and Support(s) required to meet “individual needs”

Variety of supports: health; social welfare; employment; justice; education and training.




The 2013 policy turn…

Commitment to end long-term homelessness by

2016

Regional arrangements for policy implementation

Protocol between central government (DECLG) and local authorities

Delegation of revenue budgets to lead local authority in each region (Section 10, 1988 Housing Act)

Reporting and monitoring

Finance and expenditure (monthly & quarterly)

Service delivery and performance (quarterly)




What’s next at local level?

Development of service provision in each regional

area

PASS - client management system; national roll-out led by DRHE will be completed in 2103

National Quality Standards for Homeless Services

Standard framework for all service types under housing-led approach

Service standards (including participation & voice mechanisms; governance; funding; performance; monitoring

Project development in 2013 led by DRHE




Dublin Housing First Demonstration Project

Housing First Europe (Peer City) Established 2011/12;

Successes: Consolidation in 2013: new legal entity;

Board of Directors; Advisory Group; Team Leader; Evaluation; Housing team; Support team (ICM akin to NYC, USA)

Establishment of service structure and teams; tenancies established and maintained

Challenges Widening intake beyond rough sleepers (minor)

Access to accommodation (major):

Attitudes to client group in market and among social housing providers;

Cost and availability (location, size, facilities; congregate and scattered site)

Homeless

Shelter

placement

Transitional

housing

Permanent

housing

Ongoing, flexible

supports




What’s next for Housing First at national level?

Dublin’s Housing First model requires more formal

integration under revised Irish homeless policy.

Not yet achieved. Housing First remains undefined in policy

Results of Dublin Demonstration Project are nascent but compelling.

Growing realisation that adopting a housing-led approach to the resolution of homelessness in

Ireland will require:

Resolution of the deficits of Irish housing policy

Greater recognition that housing is at the centre of Ireland’s omni-crisis




Ireland’s omni-crisis

Economic

Banking

Financial

Social

Reputational

Causation? Manifold…key process of urbanisation and the urban growth model (esp. second era of the Celtic Tiger economy 2000 – 2008)

Pro-cyclical fiscal and housing policy;

Light-touch (absent) regulation (housing finance);

Facilitative planning and development;

‘positive business environment’.




The ‘financialisation’ of Irish housing

Process

Global capital flows switching into Irish urbanisation: asset bubble and speculative development

The global credit cycle and EZ monetary policy

‘Financial deepening’ of Irish homeowners (equity release)

Predatory and fraudulent lending

Financialisation effects…

Negative impact on access to housing for lower-income and excluded households

Changed inter-tenure relationships

The ‘locked in’; the ‘squeezed out’ and the ‘left

behind’

Mortgage debt crisis: transition from forbearance to foreclosure

Worsening housing security




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(1) Share of Irish pension funds' assets allocated to property, 2000-2007 (Source: Adapted from Christophers (2011); Irish Association of Pension Funds (note shares are for the start of each year)

(2) Total annual capital formation in Irish housing, 1975-2008 €m (Source: Data compiled from CSO and DECLG Housing Statistics Database)

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The ‘locked in’ homeowners…

Negative equity

Decline in values of 50 % (2007-12) locked 240,000 households into a negative equity position totalling €25 billion (Irish Central Bank, 2012)

Reduces labour market mobility (debt trap)

Restricts housing market recovery to new entrants or those not in negative equity

Eliminates ‘wealth effect’ of homeownership

Reduces debt-based domestic demand

Mortgage arrears @ March 2013

I in 7 Irish mortgages in arrears of €3.04 billion

12 % of value of balance

outstanding of all Irish

mortgages. Significant &

growing impairment on banks balance sheet

95,554 (12.3%) households in

arrears >90 days on

principal dwelling house (PDH)

29,369 (19.7%) of Buy To Let

(BTL) in arrears >90 days




The inter-tenure transfer of demand to rental housing

Boom to Bust

Boom: aspirant homeowners transferred their housing need to private rental due to inability to access private housing in preferred location (Downey, 1998, 2008; Drudy and

Punch, 2005)

Bust: distressed homeowners renting out housing in prime rental locations and down-sizing and/ or moving to less preferred locations (or back to their parents!) (Downey,

forthcoming)

Results Greater reliance on private

rental market and deeper segmentation between residential enclaves of corporate and professional components and lower income households

Demand ‘transfer’ process impacts disproportionally to squeeze lower-income & welfare dependent households out of good quality housing in inner urban and suburban locations




The ‘squeezed out’ low-income renters… Percentage difference between maximum rent subvention rates and rents in Dublin city for selected rental dwelling types, 2005-

2007 Source: Downey, 2008

Income inadequacy and rents

Key issue here is relationship between income inadequacy, market rents and income maintenance (rent supplementation) for low income households 2005: 60,200 households

in receipt of rental subsidy (€369m)

2010: 96,800 households (€516m)

40 percent (!) of Irish private rental sector

Widening gap between rents & income




Changes in Irish residential property prices and private

rents, 2003-2012 Source: CSO (2012c) RPPI and CPI

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Residential Property Price Index (Base Jan 2005 = 100)

Rent stops declining in 2009




The ‘left behind’ unmet housing need… Unmet housing need (households in need of housing support,

which cannot be accommodated through the existing stock available to local housing authorities)

2008: 56,249 households

2011: 98,318 households (75 percent increase)

Two thirds (66.8 percent) ‘unable to meet the cost of

accommodation’

Homelessness:

March 2011: 2,348 households (1,089 in Dublin) (DECLG/ Housing

Agency)

April 2011: 3,808 households (2,375 in Dublin) (CSO, Census 2011)

Sept 2011 (revised data): 1,981 households in Dublin (DRHE and

HA

2013 housing needs assessment underway now




Challenges? Dealing with the increased risk and

uncertainty of financialisation of Irish housing system

The financialisation of home was never designed to enable homeownership: it was first and foremost designed to fuel the economy

This required the expansion of the mortgage market through wider access to

mortgage loans that in turn resulted in higher house prices

However, access to mortgage finance does not equal affordability.

Therefore the result of the expansion of mortgage finance ‘is

not improved access to homeownership but an increase in risk and uncertainty’ (See Aalbers, 2008).

Financialisation effects: multi-dimensional Social; Social-Psychological; Health; Administration; Financial; Political;

Organisational.




What’s next in 2013?

Next stage in the financialisation process Installation regime of ‘accumulation by dispossession’ across Irish

economy (EU/ECB/IMF troika programme of privatisation and

marketisation)

2013: ‘end of the beginning’ of the Irish housing crisis Forbearance turns to foreclosure ‘accumulation by repossession’

Unmet housing needs: strengthen, deepen, broaden Structural routes into housing exclusion and homelessness increasingly

prevalent

Fiscal crisis of the Irish state and austerity impacts Reductions in expenditure on homeless services in 2013/14 and on critical

public services

‘Crisis management’ continues to dominate homeless service responses and development. Mitigate implementation of the 2013 policy turn?




What’s required? Revision of housing policy

Irish housing-led approach is under-developed &

insufficient. Needs to be urgently rectified:

Greater housing choice: general needs affordable rental

Access to housing: residual income affordability of housing needs to be resolved

Labour market relationships: creating work and making work pay

Greater coherence with other policy spheres: joined-up especially with Health, Welfare and Justice

Government needs to re-think and act on housing

Restructure and regulate the housing market for a sustainable housing system as a central element of national strategies for economic recovery from 2013




DR. DÁITHÍ DOWNEY DRHE, DUBLIN, IRELAND

[email protected] WWW.HOMELESSSDUBLIN.IE

Thank you

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.homelesssdublin.ie/

Ireland’s Housing Led Approach to Homelessness: The Way Home or a Path to Nowhere?

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