July 16, 2012
Housing charity Focus Ireland has mounted a concerted campaign to secure a legal right to housing for all citizens in need of a home, in line with the situation in other European countries.
The Right To A Home campaign commenced today, as a survey for the charity suggested 80 per cent of the public support a constitutional right to a home.
Focus Ireland chief executive Joyce Loughnan said: “Focus Ireland believes the failure to include the right to housing as one of the issues for the Constitutional convention to examine is a mistake by the Government.”
The charity said the Government is was “out of step with the public” on the issue and requested that the right to a home be added to the agenda for the second phase of the Constitutional Convention.
Up to 5,000 homeless people and 98,000 households are on social housing waiting lists around the country. Focus Ireland called for political support and “joined up thinking” across policies to tackle marginalisation.
Director of advocacy with the charity, Mike Allen, cited the laws of England and France where the implementation of the right to housing has had “progressive” results with homelessness falling by 50 per cent in England in the subsequent five years.
Mr Allen said this was due to authorities introducing a range of preventative measures, faced with the right of the homeless to housing.
In France “the enforceability of the right to housing is a potent force of action by those enduring housing deprivation and those who work for them” Mr Allen said.
A right to a home would also have “significant impact” on the rights of those in mortgage or rent arrears that may be in difficulty with banks or landlords.
Mr Allen said there was “failure as a nation to address that right during the boom”.
“The largest boom in housing building ever to take place and leave us at the end of that with massive housing lists, huge mortgage debt and large numbers of homeless is an indication that we got the balance of those things wrong.”
Mr Allen said until the importance of the right to a home was constitutionally acknowledged, we were “missing a very central part of what it means to be human and what it means in Irish society to be full citizens”.
A survey carried out for the charity found 80 per cent of the public support a Constitutional right to housing for Irish citizens. The poll of 1,000 people nationwide by Amarach Consulting found 8 per cent of people disagreed with this proposal. Some 12 per cent were in the “don’t know” category.
Source: Irish Times
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