The Framing of Affordability within Ireland’s Housing Discourse : Analysis of the Negotiated Process of Narrative Struggles within the Framing of Affordability within Housing Discourse

Abstract: After the 2008 Global Financial Crash, Ireland’s neoliberal housing policy turned again to housing financialisation as focus lay upon the attraction of corporate investors in order to revive the housing market. The result was a swift return to housing price rises but this came with ever growing homelessness and housing precarity as REITs and other corporate investors' influence on the housing market grew. Affordability has become a common framing as one of the key issues which Ireland’s housing system is currently facing, by the state and researchers alike. However, much of this research frames housing issues and policies as being objectively defined. Social constructionism holds that housing issues and policy are heavily subjective, where material conditions are subjectively negotiated among competing narratives steeped in ideology and vested interests in an attempt to create a dominant narrative. This research, building upon a social constructionism approach, has analysed the negotiated process within the affordability discourse of Ireland. The key findings are that the state’s affordability narrative remains heavily linked to a commodified, private sector led housing provision which holds to its traditional liberal welfare regime. This narrative is reflected in the private sector’s narrative, which frames the state as a facilitator of the efficient private sector, which within a housing system free of state barriers, can create affordability. However, as more and more face into greater housing precarity as unaffordability grows, a counter narrative framing state built public housing, supported by the non-profit sector as key to reducing the reliance on a greedy private sector and in so doing, achieving affordability. As this movement grows, spearheaded by the increasing threat of Sinn Féin to parliamentary power and the growth of the trade union led Raise the Roof campaign movement, this counter narrative has grown in power. Although limited, there has been a shift in the state’s narrative which reflects that of the counter narrative where the state frames the need for a greater direct state role in affordable housing provision and state intervention as a control mechanism on the negative effects of the profit motive of the private sector. Although this can not be said to be a shift in welfare regime, it highlights the negotiated process of narratives within affordability discourse.