An architect explaining the years of policies & interventions which have contributed towards causing the housing crisis
An architect explaining the years of policies & interventions which have contributed towards causing the housing crisis
27 comments
[Source](https://issuu.com/brianpelanone/docs/housing_62nd_issue)
I don’t feel that build-to-rent is *inherently* bad, but the rents have to be affordable to the people who actually live and work in the area. A while ago I looked at the Fernbank complex in Dundrum, which is conveniently located near a Luas stop, it took a bit of Googling to find out what rents were. Once I did, all I could think was “who *are* these people who can afford to rent there?”
Isn’t this all just waffle. He’s mentioned a lot of factors contributing to small tweaks in price, but periods like this where housing is just unaffordable are inevitable, no? In some years they’ll be cheap again and we’ll be spending money like monkeys on banana island.
I keep linking what Ronan Lyons wrote in [The Currency recently](https://thecurrency.news/articles/88462/official-ireland-cant-comprehend-how-fast-the-country-is-growing-thats-a-big-problem/). It’s not sexy, it isn’t a conspiracy theory based on evil politicians and capitalism/neoliberalism or whatever buzzword is in vogue, and so it flies under the radar a lot:
>For net migration, officials set out three projections: low, medium and high net migration, corresponding to 10,000, 20,000 and 30,000 additional people per year moving to the country rather than leaving it. In simple terms, statisticians were expecting the population to increase by somewhere between 32,000 people per year and 49,000.
>These projections are subjected to a reality check of sorts each year, when officials tot up information from other sources, to generate an annual estimate of the population. Doing this each year between 2016 and the latest Census, the best estimates were that Ireland had added 272,000 extra people in the six years to 2022 – or 45,000 people a year.
>What the latest Census figures show is that the country instead added nearly 385,000 people in the same six-year period – or 64,000 per year. Just over 190,000 of this increase came from net international migration. In other words, nearly 32,000 more people came to Ireland each year to live than left.
>…
>Irish housing policy is currently constrained by the Housing Needs & Demand Assessment (HNDA), an exercise that each local authority must undertake as part of the preparations for its Development Plan. Development Plans for the rest of the decade are to be published by almost all local authorities over the next year or so. Those plans are reviewed by the Office of the Planning Regulator (OPR).
>The OPR takes a dim view of local authorities countenancing growth above the official projections contained in the HNDA. But the HNDA is based on a view of the future where Ireland’s net migration is just 15,000 per year. Even averaged over the past 25 years, net migration has been over 22,000 per year. And as per above, net migration for the rest of the decade could be twice that long-run average and three times the number in the HNDA.
>All of this wouldn’t be so critical if the HNDA’s numbers weren’t taken as maximums, the ceiling above which the number of new homes should not go. But the combination of a failure of imagination – and a failure to understand the consequences of too few homes – has left Ireland dangerously exposed to many more years of growing pains.
One of the most critical failures of this policy was the failure to achieve economies of scale all of which it was largely predicated on…but instead of changing course they’ve doubled down as if the magic house fairy will suddenly appear. This is long term policy over the last decade that is going to destroy an entire generation or more.
What’s being an architect got to do with the content written here? He’s talking about policy and ideology. Not building design, structure etc.
This is a load of ideological waffle. He’s another Rory Hearne.
Try get his practice to do you an extension and we’ll see how in touch with the common folk he is. Oh, and his old man is a mega-rich property developer.
Back in 2013/2014 the country needed a level of foreign capital to kick start the construction sector again. At the same time, there was a requirement for the sophostication of the rental sector, adding to but not replacing existing landlords. The policies implemented at the time worked, attracting the likes of Kennedy Wilson etc who delivered much needed capital and housing units.
Unfortunately instead of turning off the tap / tapering controls as things improved, they allowed it to continue and there was an absolute free for all in terms of incentives for foreign capital to the detriment of domestic investment.
The government couldn’t build houses now if they tried as they are competing with absolutely massive capital and expertise of these funds which are hoovering up resources and can do things cheaper as a result
This guy is mental. The quality of new deliveries are *far* higher now than any time in the history of the state. You can’t build low quality homes anymore. That’s one of the reasons homes are now so expensive. And his solution to housing inaffordability is creating more regs and standards to raise the quality even higher, and push out financiers and economists so there can be more deferral to architects and planners (who, again, make fine communities but have no regard for the cost). He’s a hop skip and a jump away from advocating for middle class ghettos. And if you happen to be on Twitter, he’s also an extremely rude, self-righteous douchebag.
This would probably carry more weight if he’d actually been in the 90s and 00s.
People forget what I Ireland was like 10 years ago. No one could get mortgages, tradesmen fled construction in their droves and their was no apprenticeships.
It was bleak in the construction industry.
It’s taking a huge amount of time to catch up and to build these skill trade groups.
Everything is out of control because their is no stock.
Government policy hasn’t helped.
Hopefully the promised stock comes on stream.
Don’t envy people paying 2000+ rent and trying to save for a deposit
Oh great, another architect who thinks they can solve the housing crisis.
There’s just so much loaded language and leaps between cause and effect.
‘Vultures’, ‘Diktats’
‘Reduced standards for new apartments’ – how? What does this mean?
‘Stalled delivery as developers went back to the drawing board’ – what evidence does he have of this? [There’s no hitch in 2015 here in terms of completions or commencements](https://twitter.com/ConallMacCoille/status/1552601798791290880?s=20&t=tUQgrhf9PGwNbKY5ccKGTQ). He’s making this up.
‘Coveney brought in SHD after being lobbied by Property Industry Ireland’ – Yeah I’m sure it was that simple. Funnily enough it’s being scrapped for not delivering, if the builders (like, for example Curley’s father) wanted it so badly why didn’t they take advantage of it?
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Not going through any more but the article is pure garbage.
Ive two kids about to enter secondary school. I’ve put a strong emphasis in them learning European languages which they can go use to study and work in other vibrant European cities.
I just can’t see the issue of enough stock being solved here in Dublin at viable prices. There isn’t enough zoned land, we don’t build at a high enough density and NIMBYISM is catered to here far too much.
Yes, other major destinations are having a real issue with property availability but the key point is there are many ‘secondary’ cities with good job opportunities in the likes of Germany, The Netherlands or Spain where they can make a life for themselves.
Unless toute from a very wealthy background, Dublin will remain too expensive to live in and you’ll never save for a mortgage with the rents on offer.
Oh hey I went to school with him. Nice lad. No surprise he’s done well and is speaking sense. Good man Rob 😀
MJ.
The game is rigged mang
While I don’t deny that the government needs to prioritise the needs of its citizens who need housing rather than rich developers a lot of that article doesn’t make sense. He seems to want tighter building regulations at the same time as expecting prices to fall. I am not an economist but I do know that the tighter regulations will push prices up not down.
Housing Disaster.
REITS and investment funds are parasites. The sooner they are banned and removed from the country the better.
I follow him on Twitter. I sort of feel like his whole solution is just “get the government to build everything”. I for one don’t have much faith in our Government to be efficient, competent or to keep costs under control. It seems like a very simplistic, ideological solution.
> Murphy also removed local authority power over building heights against the recommendation of his own department.
Considering how many bricks they and their voters collectively shit whenever someone submits planning for an apartment block, that’s not such a bad thing.
The Pelican brief
Where’s the bit about deemed disposal?
All those builders and tradesmen vanished into dust like they were snapped away like Thanos. Mid swing of a hammer, just POOF they’re gone.
No, the reason they stopped working in construction and the reason there were loads of half finished ghost estates at the time was because building and selling property using the Celtic Tiger model became no longer profitable. Developers closed up sites and left builders to fend for themselves.
Unfortunately the Fine Gael government of the time were cheerleaders for the invisible hand of the market and made zero effort to ensure that construction continued.
As the existing stocks dwindled, and tradesmen either left the country or got other jobs, they still refused to step in.
When there was a shortage and REITs started hoovering up property to make themselves unnecessary middle men, still no intervention or policy from the govt.
And now that housing for the people of Ireland is *fucked*, that dipshit Varadkar stands there and shites on about landlords needing their income.
This crisis is absolutely a failure of government policy. The policy was designed to facilitate developers and drive the property market, but with private developers finding it too unprofitable to build property, (and to be fair, why should they if it’s not making them money) the government needed to step in and start taking actions to maintain construction.
They refused to take action because of ideology, and they created the mess we’re currently in
He’s right about constitutional arguments, they’re not applicable to companies, only to individuals
You picked the wrong sub for this post 🙂 Ill summarise the majority position on housing here:
1. housing crisis is caused by low supply
2. low supply is caused by red tape
3. best solution deregulate the market
its pretty simple. Best not to over complicate things. If in doubt, just make another nimby bashing post. They are super popular.
Why can’t they tax the vultures and drive them out? Am I silly in saying this?