Why the left is losing on housing

The Week in Housing 07/03/2025

Myself and Sarah Sheridan are organising a series of lunchtime webinars with international experts on making rental housing affordable. The first one takes place on March 19th, 1pm. Darren Baxter Clow will present research on the topic: 'Can bringing private homes into social ownership rewire the housing system?'. Jim Baneham (Director of Delivery & Innovation, the Housing Agency) will respond to Darren’s paper. Register here. Full details for all the webinars and links to register at the end of this post.

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Given the scale of the issues housing should be an open goal for Sinn Féin, the Labour Party and the Social Democrats. And yet, although it is certainly a difficult issue for Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, it feels like the opposition are not landing punches.

The key claim of all the left opposition parties is that the Government is overly reliant on the private sector, and that much more intervention is needed. When Micheál Martin recently talked about pivoting to the private sector, the left responded with incredulity, as if housing policy couldn't be any more private sector oriented. But this argument is very hard to make in the context of record levels of spending on non-market housing and unprecedented intervention in the private rental sector. It is a line of attack that simply cannot survive contact with reality.

How can we make sense of the political predicament the left find itself in?

The answer, I believe, relates to the move away from the previously dominant ‘neoliberal’ housing paradigm. Neoliberalism refers to Government policy that promotes the logics, processes and practices associated with the market, in particular: the price mechanism as a regulator of supply and demand; private investment as the principal way to provide resources; and competition.

Irish housing policy has been seen as a poster child for neoliberalism, as argued in this edited volume from Andrew MacLaran and Sinead Kelly, and in recent books by Eoin O’Broin and Rory Hearne. The 1980s and 1990s saw retrenchment of social housing; the extension of PRS subsidies; the elimination of many homeowner supports, such as local authority mortgages; the abolition of rent controls; the deregulation of the banking sector; and aggressive tax incentives to promote development.

But things have changed. In a previous post (and subsequent academic research) I argued that we have now moved to what I call ‘post-neoliberal’ housing policy. Post-neoliberalism has two fundamental characteristics. The first is the return of state investment. I summarised the major policy shifts in my earlier post, but the key examples in Ireland are:

- Massive increase in investment in social housing, especially capital spending

- The creation of new non-market affordable housing tenures (cost rental and affordable purchase)

- PRS regulation (four iterations of rent controls since 2015, some increased security of tenure, regulation of institutional investment (e.g. Tyrellstown amendment and purchase of single family dwellings), enhanced enforcement)

- State land management (the LDA)

So, in short, we have a much more interventionist approach to our housing system. To my mind, it is impossible to argue, as many continue to do, that we are still in a neoliberal housing regime. Moreover, these shifts are part of a wider shift in political economy, as Governments around the world move towards higher levels of spending, greater regulation, and a renewed emphasis on industrial policy (all very evident in the post-pandemic era).

There is, however, a second feature of post-neoliberal housing that is crucial, because housing policy is still shaped by a wider economic context. Most importantly, policy makers make continual reference to the importance of supply, and consequently, international institutional investment, i.e. capital flows linking Irish real estate to global financial circuits. The transnational economic context created during the periods of neoliberalization (i.e. financial deregulation, 1980s-2008) and austerity (i.e. deleveraging of distressed assets, 2008-2015), thus determine how capital flows into the Irish housing system, in ways which continue to shape and constrain policy action.

Post-neoliberalism is thus not a coherent policy regime, but one beset with internal tensions and perhaps even contradictions.

The challenge for Sinn Féin, Labour and the Social Democrats is not to critique neoliberal housing policy. To do so is a case of generals fighting the last war. The challenge for the left is develop a progressive critique of this new, and somewhat contradictory, post-neoliberal turn.

So what might such a critique look like? I can’t say I have the answer, but I think it would include some of the following elements (note, many of these elements are already a part of the opposition’s playbook, but they have not cohered into a core message around an alternative approach to housing):

- Overreliance on international capital to fund housing supply. This means there is too much reliance on Build to Rent and the PRS, a segment which cannot meet the needs of all households. Moreover, it blatantly undermines the Government’s stated aim of increasing homeownership. In addition, our reliance on international capital makes our housing system vulnerable to changes in the global economy, and therefor precarious.

- Post-neoliberal housing policy in Ireland has emerged as response to a crisis. It has done so in an ad hoc, often kneejerk fashion. This has created policy volatility and means housing policy is increasingly incoherent. The Government is both increasing non-market supply and subsidizing demand for private rental (HAP) and homeownership (Help to Buy, Shared Equity). The result is both expensive for Government (hence fiscally unsustainable, as I argued here) and incredibly inflationary (see this piece on Shared Equity). It is not at all clear that policy outcomes match with policy objectives, and some policies undermine the objectives of others (e.g. the tension between rent controls and reliance on institutional PRS, inflationary policies undermining affordability etc.)

- Our housing policy, as argued by the Housing Commission, is insufficiently linked to ‘big picture’ structural issues, especially infrastructure (transport, water etc.)

- There doesn’t seem to be much a vision for our housing system, beyond throwing money at it and ritually invoking the gods of supply.

As noted, the opposition have already been making many of the points listed above. However, they have not cohered into a clear critique or indeed an alternative. But perhaps most importantly, the core messaging has been around building more social housing and having more regulation. But as I argued at the outset, the Government are already doing this, and have been for quite some time.

But there is one more challenge for the left. Perhaps the biggest contradiction in Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael’s approach to housing is that it is largely based on stealing the ideas of the opposition parties. Most of the biggest changes in housing policy (increased social housing, cost rental, regulation of the PRS, active land management) were originally proposed by one or more of the left-wing parties. The opposition are obviously loathe to point out that Government housing policy is more or less what they themselves have been arguing for.

The recent furore over RPZs is a case in point. All three left opposition parties promised to phase out RPZs and introduce reference rents in their election manifestos. As soon as the new Government is up and running, the Taoiseach turns around and says, you know what? Maybe we should phase out RPZs and replace them with reference rents. The left parties then denounce this, despite themselves advocating for it during the election campaign. And so the left parties default to their tried and tested ‘public good/private bad’ messaging.

It's time to move on to something more coherent and credible. Now seems a good time for progressives to try to put together a clearer analysis of post-neoliberal housing policy, and link this to clear alternative and new political messaging.

News & events

The Simon Community are hiring a new research lead. Conor O’Toole’s (ESRI) Simmon Communities webinar on the economic and housing outlook for 2025 is now available to watch. CATU, the tenants union, has created a new database of PRS evictions. Our new housing Minister has announced funding for the state’s second hand housing acquisition programme (which incidentally is the subject of the first webinar in the series I’m organising, see below).

What I’m reading

Threshold have released a fantastic and very timely new proposal on the reform of RPZs - an absolute must read. Some new research on PRS, precarity and migrant experience (really looking forward to reading this one). The CIF have a new paper on increasing housing supply. More interesting comments from the new RTB director, reported in the Irish Examiner. New evidence from the US that increasing security of tenure doesn’t reduce investment in the PRS.

Making Rental Housing Affordable: International Perpesctives

The Geary Institute for Public Policy and Equality Studies Centre University College Dublin are delighted to announce a new lunchtime webinar series Making Rental Housing Affordable: International Perspectives

Join us for our first webinar on 19 March at 1pm where we will be joined by Dr Darren Baxter (Joseph Rowntree Foundation) in which he will share insights on housing acquisition schemes in the UK. Details and sign up link below:

Title of webinar: 'Can bringing private homes into social ownership rewire the housing system?'

Our homes should be the foundations for our lives. However, all too prevalent are forms of renting that are high cost, insecure and poor quality, and which therefore hinder our economic security, health and well-being. It is in this context that socialisation, where councils and housing associations buy already existing homes and convert them to social housing, has become a growing part of the housing debate in recent years.

This webinar will discuss research from JRF examining – in a UK context – how acquisition can be part of solving the housing crisis, and the challenges and issues which policymakers must overcome if it is to be successfully deployed.

We are also delighted to welcome Jim Baneham, Director of Delivery & Innovation, Housing Agency, who will act as respondent and will offer an overview of similar programmes in Ireland, including Cost Rental Tenant In-situ.

You can sign up for this talk here.

Dr Darren Baxter is a Principal Policy Advisor at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, leading the organisations policy work on housing, land and climate. Prior to joining JRF, Darren worked on housing, UK poverty and environmental policy at a leading progressive think-tank. Darren has also worked in academic research and holds a PhD from the University of York.

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This webinar series includes:

• Wed 19 March (1-2pm): Dr Darren Baxter (UK) - Can bringing private homes into social acquisition rewire the housing system?

• Wed 16 April (1-2pm): Dr Gerald Koessl (Austria)- Cost Rental Housing in Austria: How does it Work and What is the Impact on the Housing Market

• Wed 21 May (1-2pm): Solveig Raberg Tingley (Denmark) - Non-Profit and Affordable Housing: The Danish Experience

• Wed 11 June (1-2pm): Dr Eduardo González de Molina (Spain) - Rent Regulation in Spain

• Wed 25 June (1-2pm): Prof Stefan Kofner (Germany) - Critical Analysis of the German Local Reference Rent System: Challenges and Perspectives

This webinar series is organised by Dr Michael Byrne (UCD) with the support of Dr Sarah Sheridan (Independent Researcher). We would like to acknowledge the Housing Agency for their contribution to this webinar series and also UCD Geary Institute for Public Policy and Equality Studies (UCD).