Even if the state didn’t spend a penny on new housing, they’d be the biggest actor in housing since they get to decide who gets to build what and where.
If only the State were delivering more housing than the private market is currently outputting. The private market is not going to solve the housing crisis, they have zero incentive to do so. Their claim is that profit margins are already very tight, and inflation is making the cost of raw materials incredibly expensive. Then there are the investment funds buying up new housing to rent them out,while paying zero corporation tax on their rental income. In the first half of this year, the investment property market was worth 3.1 billion euro. The government pledged to spend 1.7 billion next year to develop new social homes, and 1.1 billion on schemes that remove properties from the private rental and sales markets such as HAP etc.
Even if output this year is the highest its been since the 2008 crash, we will still miss the target of 35k new homes this year with about 28k set to be completed in total. At the same time, our population has increased by almost 500k since 2011. The only way out of this is for the government to completely rethink social housing.
Traditionally we have reserved social housing for the poorest in society, but it doesn’t have to be that way. One of the justifications for the massive decrease in building social housing only estates is that they created ghettos where people were likely to be long term unemployed, have lower education rates, higher crime rates and so on. The idea with schemes like HAP is that in creating social housing by renting from the private market, you create mixed income communities and people are more likely to flourish in this environment compared to being segregated. I think this is actually a good idea, but the implementation of it is wrong.
The government should be developing social housing estates and apartments that are available to people at all income levels. That way you get those mixed-income communities without having a negative impact on the sales and rentals markets. I would be more than happy to not own property if I knew that my rent was guaranteed to stay at a reasonable percentage of my income for the remainder of my life. I’m sure I’m far from the only person that would be content with this. It’s a pipe dream though, I don’t know that any viable political party in Ireland is proposing something similar to that.
Does their refusal to regulate anything private while evicting people make them such a ‘player’?
“As the State builds no homes directly, invests less money than the private sector, and has delivered less social housing units than the private sector has delivered private homes – both in 2021 and so far this year – we found no basis to the Taoiseach’s repeated claim that the State is the “biggest player in housing”.”
yet, they will still make these baseless claims and fool people into thinking its factual.
5 comments
Even if the state didn’t spend a penny on new housing, they’d be the biggest actor in housing since they get to decide who gets to build what and where.
Savills wrote a report on the National Planning Framework which I [posted a month ago](https://old.reddit.com/r/ireland/comments/xxv124/the_residential_land_supply_study_how_the_cutting/) which is pretty damning. But it was a policy piece, so it didn’t get any traction here.
Ronan Lyons over at The Currency regularly puts out articles about how our [planning frameworks are affecting the provision, location, and types of new housing](https://thecurrency.news/articles/101790/were-not-just-building-too-few-houses-were-also-building-the-wrong-types/).
HAP alone means they have a colossal influence.
If only the State were delivering more housing than the private market is currently outputting. The private market is not going to solve the housing crisis, they have zero incentive to do so. Their claim is that profit margins are already very tight, and inflation is making the cost of raw materials incredibly expensive. Then there are the investment funds buying up new housing to rent them out,while paying zero corporation tax on their rental income. In the first half of this year, the investment property market was worth 3.1 billion euro. The government pledged to spend 1.7 billion next year to develop new social homes, and 1.1 billion on schemes that remove properties from the private rental and sales markets such as HAP etc.
Even if output this year is the highest its been since the 2008 crash, we will still miss the target of 35k new homes this year with about 28k set to be completed in total. At the same time, our population has increased by almost 500k since 2011. The only way out of this is for the government to completely rethink social housing.
Traditionally we have reserved social housing for the poorest in society, but it doesn’t have to be that way. One of the justifications for the massive decrease in building social housing only estates is that they created ghettos where people were likely to be long term unemployed, have lower education rates, higher crime rates and so on. The idea with schemes like HAP is that in creating social housing by renting from the private market, you create mixed income communities and people are more likely to flourish in this environment compared to being segregated. I think this is actually a good idea, but the implementation of it is wrong.
The government should be developing social housing estates and apartments that are available to people at all income levels. That way you get those mixed-income communities without having a negative impact on the sales and rentals markets. I would be more than happy to not own property if I knew that my rent was guaranteed to stay at a reasonable percentage of my income for the remainder of my life. I’m sure I’m far from the only person that would be content with this. It’s a pipe dream though, I don’t know that any viable political party in Ireland is proposing something similar to that.
Does their refusal to regulate anything private while evicting people make them such a ‘player’?
“As the State builds no homes directly, invests less money than the private sector, and has delivered less social housing units than the private sector has delivered private homes – both in 2021 and so far this year – we found no basis to the Taoiseach’s repeated claim that the State is the “biggest player in housing”.”
yet, they will still make these baseless claims and fool people into thinking its factual.
country sickens me