Gaffs for All Petition: Support the ten key policies that can fix this crisis
We call on the Government to immediately implement the following ten key policies to solve the housing crisis – which is an emergency:
1. Make housing a human right: Hold a referendum to put the right to housing in the Constitution
2. A state-guaranteed delivery of a sufficient supply of life-time-secure, affordable, decent-quality, green homes for all using public land for 100 per cent actually affordable housing. Provide 400,000 public affordable and social ‘green’ homes in the coming decade. That means 40,000 affordable homes per year (both new and using vacant/derelict buildings) on our state-owned lands (and CPO additional land as necessary)
3. Set up a state construction company – as a semi-state enterprise – to develop and build affordable homes to buy and rent, refurbish vacant and derelict property, and undertake retrofitting.
4. Give adequate state funding to guarantee new affordable and social housing (trebling state capital (new build and renovate derelict and vacant) funding from €2bn to €6bn a year for local authorities and housing associations & setting up a €5bn national housing fund at affordable rates to finance and fund building of affordable homes)
5. Make private rental real homes:
Make rents affordable – implement a three-year rent freeze, rent reduction mechanisms, rent controls on new units to the market.
Give renters security in their homes – immediate three-year eviction ban (of ‘no fault’ evictions); ban tenancy terminations for sale of property; remove the ability of landlords to evict tenants on sale and other ‘no fault’ evictions.
Airbnb/short-stay rentals should only be allowed to be used in your primary home, for less than thirty days a year, in areas of high housing need.
6. End homelessness: Develop new plan with clear timelines to end homelessness within five years. Phase out the use of emergency accommodation. Expand Housing First
7. Stop the REITs, investor funds and property purchase as investment: Remove the Real Estate Investor Trust tax incentive, and all other investor fund tax breaks and loopholes. Levy a hefty tax on investor purchase of residential property to remove non-home buyers from the market. Divest all state funding and pension funds and public sector pensions out of REITs/residential property investment funds
8. Eliminate vacant and derelict buildings and land/sites: Put in place an annual ‘use it or lose it’ tax, set at a percentage of the market value, on vacant and derelict property, land and buildings. Local authorities to CPO 10,000 vacant and derelict homes per year, and retrofit and convert them to social and affordable homes.
9. Ensure that all marginalized groups have appropriate, adequate housing. Put in place equality- and rights-based monitoring and implementation of all housing policy.
10. Green and retrofit all homes, including renewable energy, rewilding and food production, to make our housing system zero carbon in a socially just way. Make available a 100 per cent retrofit grant to low and middle income households.