Debate contribution: Housing Costs

Debate contribution by Mr Gerry Carroll on 19 January 2026.

MLA

Mr Gerry Carroll

Party at the time

People Before Profit Alliance

Date

19 January 2026

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Opposition Business

Heading

Housing Costs

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5322655

Read the official Assembly record

Text

In response to the Member, I say that it is landlords who are pushing up rents, not students or asylum seekers. I support the motion. It raises two important demands: rent controls, which are long overdue, and a moratorium on the house sales scheme. I will not be supporting either amendment, because I think that they weaken the motion's demands. I do not think that we need another exploration of options or another review. Rather, we need urgent and radical action, which is what people are crying out for. I certainly support the proposal in the Sinn Féin amendment to have a body to regulate the private rented sector, but its removal of the demand for rent controls would weaken the motion. The housing emergency is a perfect storm. Private rents are skyrocketing, and housing insecurity is at crisis levels. Landlords can evict tenants in order to hike rents or as retaliation for requesting basic repairs, as happens on the regular. The social housing waiting list grows longer by the day, and, at current construction rates, it will take 60 years to clear. In the middle of all of that, the Housing Executive continues to sell off its best-quality housing stock. I understand why people in my constituency or elsewhere want to buy their Housing Executive home, as doing so gives them stability and security in a very turbulent housing market, but if enough social housing is not being built simultaneously, that policy is a recipe for disaster. The figures speak for themselves. In 1981, two in five people lived in a Housing Executive home. By 2020, it was just one in 10. The house sales scheme is a major reason that social housing stock is being decimated, and the most outrageous part of it is that many homes sold through that scheme have not stayed in the ownership of the families who need them. They have ended up in the hands of private landlords. In 2019, around one quarter of the houses sold were being rented out privately. We do not even know today's numbers: I suspect that they are even higher. It is a tragedy that the Housing Executive is losing its best homes to private landlords, while working-class families wait years for housing. While selling off desperately needed homes, the Housing Executive is needlessly evicting grieving tenants through its cruel succession policy. The motion calls for "third generation rent controls". I welcome the fact that other parties, including the SDLP and the Executive parties, have, in the debate, finally embraced rent control. However, weak, third-generation rent controls will not cut it. They only apply to people in tenancy: they only apply to in-tenancy increases. Without a no-fault eviction ban, nothing prevents profiteering landlords from evicting tenants to hike rents. Last week on 'The Nolan Show', the Communities Minister quoted a Swedish economist who claimed that rent controls destroy cities. Rather than quoting neoliberal orthodoxy as though it were gospel, the Minister should listen to his own constituents who cannot afford to keep a roof over their head. He should also listen to housing experts, including Housing Rights, who argue that opposition to rent controls relies on oversimplified economic models that treat housing like a competitive commodity, which is not working. Rent controls clearly work. They work for renters. Landlords do not like them, because they will be out of pocket. Vienna has rent ceilings and the lowest housing costs in western Europe. Stockholm's tenant unions negotiate for half a million members, and rents there would be 68% higher without rent controls in place. Berlin's rent break keeps cost at £13.09 per square metre, versus London's £37. Catalonia recently won rent controls, and rents fell by about 9% last year. Maybe the Minister defends landlords because so many of his party colleagues are landlords. In fact, one in five MLAs, at least, in this Chamber, are landlords as well. I think that it is outrageous that people who are profiteering from the system are allowed to legislate and vote on housing policy. We need rent controls that reduce rents, an end to the social housing fire-sale scheme and a massive programme of social housebuilding. Working class communities did not create this crisis, but they are paying for it, and the Executive must stop making it worse. That is, of course, not to mention that there are at least 20,000 empty homes across the North and that number could, indeed, be much higher.

744 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 14:17 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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