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The Housing Market – the necessity of regulation?

The Housing Market – the necessity of regulation?. Mike Allen President: FEANTSA Director of Advocacy: Focus Ireland. This Presentation. Housing and homelessness Housing and rights Housing and Markets Is Regulation the answer? Conclusions. Housing and homelessness.

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The Housing Market – the necessity of regulation?

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  1. The Housing Market – the necessity of regulation? Mike Allen President: FEANTSA Director of Advocacy: Focus Ireland

  2. This Presentation • Housing and homelessness • Housing and rights • Housing and Markets • Is Regulation the answer? • Conclusions

  3. Housing and homelessness • Homelessness has both personal (human frailty) and structural causes • More people experience short period of homelessness than previously thought • SOME exists from homelessness requires supports – but ALL exists from homelessness require a home • An adequate supply of affordable housing is the most effective preventative measure and essential any solution.

  4. Housing and Rights • The Right to Housing recognised as Economic, Social and Cultural Right • It is a fundimental right – without which other rights (education, health, family etc) cannot be realised • Recognised as constitutional or legal right in some jurisdictions • No correlation between homeless & rights

  5. So will a ‘free market’ provide affordable housing? • Is housing a ‘product market’? • Without social supports capacity to act in the housing market depends upon value of labour on the labour market • There is no reason why a free market should provide affordable decent housing for everyone…. • So does regulation provide answers?

  6. Regulation and home ownership • Cultural/political drive to homeownership as prefered tenure in many countries • Households driven to borrow too much to ‘get on the ladder’ • Housing as speculative commodity • Effective regulation excludes many workers from home ownership

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  8. Regulation and the private rental market • What are we regulating? • The market? Standards? Tenure? Prices? • Standards Regulation limit choices: • e.g. Bedsits, Boarding houses (Hoch and Slayton) • Price and tenure regulation contrict supply • Rent control are often a response to housing shortage: but does not solve it

  9. Beyond Regulaton • Amartya Sen, famine and homelessness • Beyond regulaton - the case for intervention – social housing supply • Challenges: • Stigma/residualisation • Exclusion • Marketisation due to private finance

  10. Conclusions • Housing markets are very complex • But their outcomes fundimantally define the quality of human experience • Regulation has unpredicted impacts – even when well intentioned • Public, non-market investment is essential – but also complex • Need a discourse which rejects ‘housing as a commodity’ and ownership as a goal.

  11. “I have listened to the sad and difficult stories of people who had been let down by a society that had allowed housing need to become a commodity in a speculative market; which had, in recent years, failed to distinguish between the basic means of participating in society, the needs of citizens in a democracy, and the lure of insatiable wants, driven by the commodification of experience and the trivialisation of our day to day discourse on issues that matter. “ Michael D Higgins – President of Ireland

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