The ‘property ladder’ was real winner of #GE24

The Week in Housing 06/12/24

Today’s piece looks at how Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael got their political messaging right when it comes to housing policy. It builds on last week’s piece on coalition talks and housing policy, which also featured in this recent Irish Times piece. Thanks to everyone who has signed up as a paid subscriber, I really appreciate the support. Hopefully I’ll get a few more which will allow me to do more with this project.

Coming into this election, the left opposition parties wanted housing and homelessness to be the #1 political issue. According to the exit polls, it was. There was a clear right/left dividing line between Government and opposition. And the Government, especially Fianna Fáil as holders of the housing portfolio, had presided over record increases in rents, house prices and homelessness. It’s hard to imagine a more favourable political context for the left. And yet, it appears that Fianna Fáil, and perhaps to a lesser extent Fine Gael, convinced voters when it comes to housing policy. How can we explain this snatching of victory from the jaws of defeat? The answer, in my view, has to do with two things: the housing aspirations of voters and political messaging. Let’s approach this by looking at Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael’s ‘offence’ and ‘defence’.

In terms of ‘defence’, the centre-right stole the left’s close by backing non-market housing (social and cost rental, and affordable purchase). They had similar targets to the left in terms of the non-market output; both centre-right parties promised it would be more than 30% of total housing supply. Over the last four years, they rapidly scaled up investment in this segment, and created the two new tenure of cost rental and affordable purchase.

In this way, the centre-right insulated itself from the traditional left attack that we need more social/non-market housing, and that policy can’t relly on the private market and developers alone.

True, Sinn Féin and the other left parties tried to pick holes in Government policy. They argued the ‘affordable tenures’ were not really affordable, and promised policies to reduce cost rents and affordable purchase prices. But as these tenures are currently tiny, very new and poorly understood by the public, this rather technical argument didn’t seem to land with voters.

More importantly, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael were able to turn Sinn Féin’s proposal against them by arguing that (a) it’s not feasible because banks won’t lend under Sinn Féin’s land-leasing model for affordable purchase; and (b) it didn’t really offer ‘true homeownership’ anyway because the Government would retain ownership of the land and affordable purchase homes could not be re-sold at market prices.

Turning to ‘offence’, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael placed the ‘demand side subsidies’ of Help to Buy and Shared Equity front and centre, attempting to clearly delineate themselves from the opposition by setting these as ‘red line’ issues. They were able to send a clear message that they are the parties that support private homeownership. Thus, they could claim that they were both firm advocates of Government-provided housing, but would also support people to buy their first home and to do this, crucially, in the traditional fashion.

Sinn Féin and the Social Democrats will be frustrated by this. Over the last four years, they pivoted from an initial focus on social housing and PRS reform to clearly signaling their support for homeownership. However, their model of homeownership, by phasing out Help to Buy/Shared Equity and by retaining control of house prices under their Affordable Purchase schemes, broke with the traditional Irish approach to homeownership. It divorced ‘housing as home’ from ‘housing as asset’. They didn’t, perhaps correctly, offer households a road map to getting their foot on the ‘property ladder’.

While the left promised to support access to homes, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael promised them assets. They were able to present themselves, in other words, as the parties of the ‘property ladder’.

The left tried to pick holes in the Government’s demand-side subsidies. Especially in the first Upfront with Katy Hanon debate, which focused on housing, opposition politicians honed in on the inflationary impact of Help to Buy, citing multiple authoritative reports. This yet again rather technical point also doesn’t seem to have hit home with voters. And, to some extent at least, with good reason. Afterall, many forms of Government housing spending are inflationary. When AHBs buy ‘turnkey’ housing units off the market, it is inflationary. HAP is inflationary. In short, it was difficult for the opposition to argue that they were concerned about inflationary interventions, but also argue they were going to spend more on housing than any Government in the history of the State.

Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael seem to have read where voters are at in terms of housing and gotten their political messaging right. Crucially, where the left tapped into voters’ frustration with the failures of our housing system, the centre-right tapped into their housing aspirations. To paraphrase Steve Bannon, when it comes to housing, policy is downstream of aspirations. For those who believe that we need to make a more decisive break with the private market model, and the idea of housing as an asset, the challenge remains as always – how to communicate the potential of non-market housing to voters who remain wedded to the property ladder model of housing. This seems like the only hope if the left are to avoid, once again, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Events & news

A reminder that I recently appeared in this Reboot Republic podcast episode on cost rental housing and in this Irish Times Inside Politics podcast on housing policy and politics in the election campaign.

What I’m reading

A couple of interesting new pieces of research that might have slipped under the radar in the midst of the elections. This new report on housing affordability and the role of the European Union by FEANTSA, this recent report by the Department of Finance on the property funds sector in Ireland, and Michelle Norris’ recent working paper on land policy and social housing in comparative perspective. An interesting analysis of the new Planning and Development Act can be found here.