“Extreme” levels of derelict and vacant homes show the state is not abiding by the social contract, a systems design agency will tell an Oireachtas committee today.
Anois, which advises governments and businesses on the sustainable use of resources, will call for local authorities to register all derelict buildings and for the removal of the commercial business rates vacancy discount. It will also call for more vacant home officers to be hired by local authorities and for more derelict and vacant buildings to be brought back into use.
In a submission to the joint committee on housing, local government and heritage, Anois will describe constitutional justification for the protection of private property rights “above all else” as “the most destructive myth in Ireland”, adding that the constitution states these rights should be moderated by principles of social justice and the common good.
“The state is not upholding their side of this foundational social contract by allowing extreme levels of vacancy and dereliction to persist,” the committee will be told. “This is a dereliction of duty.”
The submission, to be delivered by Frank O’Connor and Jude Sherry, co-directors of Anois, will say dereliction and vacancy in the context of the housing crisis is “a social crime” that is “actively reducing the market supply of properties, increasing prices and rents”. It will also claim that current legislation is sufficient for tackling dereliction and vacancy but that it is not fully enforced.
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“Dereliction is a pollutant that visually reflects the inequalities in Irish society,” they will say. “When many people are struggling to find a secure and affordable home, others are allowed to leave homes empty with no repercussions.”
The submission will propose that Revenue collect the 7 per cent annual derelict sites levy — as well as any new vacancy tax — instead of local authorities, which can currently decide whether or not to impose the levy. It will also propose that legally binding targets should be placed on local authorities to end dereliction by 2030.
“We have identified a tool box of international policy measures, which take a three-pronged approach to tackling dereliction and vacancy through addressing usage, custodianship and ownership. These include an effective vacancy tax, compulsory sales/rental/use orders, meanwhile use and stricter building control,” the submission will say.
On the role that vacant home officers and local authorities ought to play in mapping dereliction and bringing homes back into social use, Sherry told The Times: “To map vacancy is a bigger issue and it wouldn’t be possible for one person, necessarily, to comprehensively do that. The most robust data we have on vacancy is the census and that’s a massive team of people going out and doing all the different areas.”
O’Connor added that the practice of demolishing buildings needed to be re-evaluated: “What we are interested in is retaining what is possible to retain. What we’re finding in Ireland at the moment is a lot of building stock that is being demolished, which actually should have been left in its current form. The most sustainable building is the existing one.”
