HOUSING HAS BEEN the defining issue of the better part of the last 20 years, shaping the lived experience of multiple generations and continues to cast a long shadow over our collective future.

Housing precarity and scarcity now sit at the heart of many of the social challenges we confront in Ireland, from poverty and inequality to mental health, safety, addiction, education and community cohesion.

After spending years looking at drug policy through a public health lens, it was an obvious step in my mind to also now look at a public health approach to the use of eviction in an already struggling society.

Over the past 18 months, I have received a growing number of heartbreaking pleas from families facing eviction by Local Authorities and Approved Housing Bodies. Many are already struggling with poverty, disability, family breakdown, addiction, ill health or the daily pressures of raising children in an increasingly precarious society.

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In a country experiencing record homelessness, it is difficult to understand why State-backed housing providers would choose a response that further destabilises families and communities rather than an intervention, however long and complex it is, that will avoid compounding harm.

As a public representative, I can say with confidence that housing dominates political interactions. A large portion of the contacts I receive relates directly or indirectly to housing. It is an all-consuming issue. It affects whether people can build a life, start a family, pursue education, leave unsafe situations, recover from addiction, return home from abroad, reduce recidivism, or simply feel secure in their place in the world.

Last November, the Department of Finance published its assessment of the economic and fiscal challenges facing the State over the next 40 years. The report makes for sobering reading. It warns that the housing crisis is likely to persist for another 15 years and acknowledges that the coming decade represents a critical window for meaningful intervention before our fiscal flexibility diminishes.

In reality, the impact of the housing crisis on people will last for generations. So imagine a state knowing this, yet still, at the local authority level, standing over the evictions of families for as little as 12,000 euros—the math isn’t mathing.

The contradiction reflects a deeper problem in Irish housing policy. Following the financial crash, successive governments stepped back from direct public provision and increasingly relied on the private market to meet........

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