Dublin needs affordable housing

02 February 2020

Commenting on an article in today’s Sunday Business Post that reports there are 100 luxury apartments still empty in Dublin’s Docklands a year after they were first brought to the rental market, Labour candidate for Dublin Bay South, Senator Kevin Humphreys, said:

“This highlights all that is wrong with Dublin’s developer-led housing market.

“The fact that there are 100 luxury apartments sitting empty in the heart of the city for a year now, while nearly 10,000 people are homeless and thousands more are struggling to pay high rents is completely nonsensical.

“These luxury units are priced at between 3,000 and 4,000 euro a month for a two-bed, and up to 20,000 euro for a penthouse on the top floor.

“Meanwhile the average working person or family will find it near impossible to find a home to rent in Dublin that is actually affordable.

“Why in the midst of a housing crisis, is the market being flooded with these types of extravagant developments?

“Where is the affordable housing that people actually need? 

“Developments like these do nothing to address the sky-high rents and chronic shortage of affordable homes.

“In my own constituency in Ringsend for example, the Glass Bottle Site presents a huge opportunity to build up to 900 social an affordable homes in the Poolbeg West SDZ. This agreement was made as far back as May 2017 but we still don’t even have planning permission for access to the site.

“It is past time at this stage for the State to take the lead and build the affordable and social homes that are so desperately needed, and to pick up the pieces from where the private market is clearly failing.

“The Labour Party has a plan to build 80,000 social and affordable homes on public land, and to freeze and cap rents until enough homes have been built.

“We need a new approach to housing in this country with a State led approach that the Labour Party will deliver.”

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