I move:
That leave be granted to introduce a Bill entitled an Act to amend the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2009 to provide for universal access to social housing by abolishing income-related criteria.
Why should we remove the income limits for social housing? I argue there are many good reasons to do it, and to do it urgently. Every week, every month and every year there is a constant and growing flow of households, which having waited sometimes in excess of ten years on housing lists, sometimes just before they are allocated a house are thrown off the housing list. This might be because they got a pay rise, an increment or a promotion. They get punished for that by being taken off a housing list they have been on sometimes for a decade or more. Then, in many cases they are left completely in limbo because their income is now too much to stay on the housing list after being on it all of those years, but too little to get a cost rental on income grounds, too little to get an affordable purchase home on any of the Government schemes and way too little to pay the extortionate rents and house prices out there on the market. You get punished for getting a pay rise or a promotion by being screwed on the housing front. In some cases, I have come across people left homeless and trapped in emergency accommodation because there is no chance they will ever get a social house as their income is too high.
This is also leading to segregation, when Government policy is supposed to be about mixed tenure. They go on about it. In reality, its failure to raise income thresholds means that every year social housing has become more segregated to those on the lowest incomes. It is concentrating the people on the lowest incomes and essentially ghettoising them. That also creates a problem for local authorities and the Government because it means the rental revenue coming in is less and is not enough to maintain the social housing.
Is what we are saying unrealistic to do? The answer is "No". Luke French, a transition year student from St. Andrew's College who was in my office last week, did the research. He looked at Vienna where the thresholds mean that between 75% and 80% of people are eligible for social housing. In Sweden and Denmark, there are no income limits at all. Anybody can access social housing. If their income goes up, then the rent they pay goes up. It means we do not have segregation. It means there is no stigma attached to social housing. It means that a large amount of revenue that is currently going into the pockets of corporate landlords who are profiteering from the housing crisis will come back to the State to maintain and build social housing. It is win-win-win for society and those who need housing. Of course, to build this level of social housing we need to State to start building. That is why we are in favour of a State construction company. This is a Bill the Government should support.
