Ireland’s housing crisis is a disaster for its people – and a gift to far-right fearmongers | Rory Hearne

by phoenixhunter

24 comments

  1. This is so accurate. Moderates are moving to the right and blaming immigration for housing woes when it is a result of failed policy.

    Anger should be directed at successive Governments who have created the current conditions by their inaction and not poor unfortunates arriving on these shores.

  2. >The question we should be asking is: who benefits when migrants and refugees are scapegoated for anger about housing? Landlords, investor funds and private developers can all sit back and charge higher rents while claiming (falsely) that the problems are down to “scarcity of homes” and “supply and demand’” in the light of a [growing population](https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-cpsr/censusofpopulation2022-summaryresults/populationchanges/).
    >
    >The responsibility for scarcity, hoarding and accumulation of property. wealth and land by a tiny elite lies squarely with Irish governments, banks, developers and investor funds.

    Keep the working class bickering for crumbs while the capitalists feast on the meal we made

  3. The article, like most of them, is partially correct, but doesn’t tell the full story.

    They made a plan to massively increase immigration but put nothing in place to back it up.

    Something that’s missing from all these articles is that they should have worked out what the reasonable limits were and restrict immigration to match. You can’t build houses overnight.

    For example, the Georgians and Nigerians – large numbers of them clog up the asylum system and most end up being deported – surely many of them are skilled tradespeople – issue them work visas to build accommodation, with a path to permanent residency and citizenship, rather than letting in the ones who can pay the people traffickers the most money.

    Then you could increase immigration more because there would be somewhere for the immigrants – and locals – to actually live. But that would be far right. Better to enrich people smugglers and put them on the streets.

  5. It seems to me if the levels of immigration could be tied to housing being added, it’d take a lot of wind out of the more extreme objector’s sails..

    If the population grows by (say) 2% in a given time period due to immigration of various forms (CTA with the UK, EU migration, asylum seekers etc.) then the housing stock must grow by at least 2% in the same period.

    It’d be a proper kick up the arse for the Government – no more: “we *will* allow a given number of people into the country, but *we’ll try* to get houses built in the meanwhile”. Actual results, not just aspirational schemes that are under-utilised.

  6. There was a time where leftists were against large scale immigration because they saw it as a tool by the capitalist class to depress wages in the domestic market, fuel unsustainable constant growth economies, exploit poor people and lead to brain drain and labor drain on poorer areas.

    In Europe, some of the main groups who facilitated immigration were right political parties.

    So it is ironic to me that nowadays the immigration issue pushes people even farther right. Probably because immigration is so often framed around race or refugee instead of the economic and social viewpoints. Far right may speak to people who get tunnel vision on the issue, but at the end of the day far right will use ascents to power to chip away at democratic institutions and further enrich capitalists. Far right policies don’t do anything for the other, more pressing causes of housing crises, just look to blame the immigrant “other” while far righties cause destruction.

  7. It’s so true if we had no housing crisis the #irelandisfull crowd would lose 90% of their talking points

  8. You can look for nuance & nefarious conspiracies in the situation as much as you like but no matter what way you boil it down it is a supply issue. We stopped building for 15yrs. Thousands of skilled tradesmen and labourers went abroad. Now we have a 15yr deficit + Covid yrs + war in Ukraine + record numbers of refugees, and we haven’t the workforce to meet demand.

    As bad as they are, if FF and FG could swap our entire budget surplus for a quick solution to housing that would not absolutely tank our economy they’d do it in a moment.

  9. Gee, if only some of us had been jumping up and down about this for years on end.

    Its been arguably the most frustrating experience of my life (from a political pov) watching the most obvious outcome ever slowly unfurl, with the government doubling and trembling down for no other reason than they and their friends own benefit.

  10. Despite the headline, Ireland is moving very much to the Left, and has been for a decade. (Tbf, the Guardian is doing its usual scaremongering of an imagined far right takeover here in the belief that they only have to be right once).

    Come back after the next election and see who’s forming a government with whom. (Hint: it won’t be FG and the National ‘Party’ or anything like it.)

  12. This is a load of shit and is “far-right” scare mongering for normal people with valid concerns. Normal people should have a government that works in their best interests and it’s not the responsibility of the average person to fix the housing crisis. This is also seen in nearly every single public service being overwhelmed and at breaking point. Ireland being a smaller country naturally means that the effects of changing demographics is felt particularly hard.

    There’s also the other point that immigrant is a blanket term used to classify many different people from many different cultures. Some people are more than happy to take as much as they can get and others come to improve their lives by being part of the Irish society or for other personal reasons. If you have 2 people both claiming state benefits neither is well liked but someone who comes here for that exact purpose is naturally seen as being worse.

    Immigration disproportionately affects the young and less well off. Students finding jobs are struggling more than ever before as a more qualified person is happy to take a grad role which then delays the grad starting their career which can cause resentment and possibly lead to the start of racist ideation.

    Even buying a house is incredibly difficult not only due to prices but the lack of availability and competition. Everyone should have the ability to live in Ireland if they wish and go through the proper channels but if the government can’t support the existing population mass immigration will cause people to be resentful.

  13. Can we please take time to acknowledge the biggest and least discussed factor in all of this? We’ve got a cohort of 18-33 year olds who were old enough in 2010-13 to have watched the dads in a lot of cases fall on some very hard times. Their dads were plumbers, builders, carpenters, electricians and even developers or landlords.

    They’ve now reached a point where they’ve chosen a career direction and many who would have followed in their fathers footsteps, haven’t. In 2014, we had just over 3,000 apprentices starting out… that’s now slowly risen to 9,000 in 2022, but we’ve not got nearly enough to build the number of houses and apartments we desperately need.

    It wasn’t some government policy or Neoliberal cabal at play, its just a social consequence of the Crash whose effects are still happening today.

    I mention developers and landlords above, half in jest, but also not… there’s a real lack of risk takers now willing or able to generate the capital for large development projects needed to tackle the housing shortage. There’s also been an exodus of landlords from the market and in their absence, banks/developers aren’t as willing to go building apartment blocks for fear they won’t have enough buyers. (I’d have expected institutional investors to plug that gap, but it simply isn’t happening/hasn’t happened yet). I’m the middle aged son of a recently passed Dad who bought an apartment 20 years ago and believe it or not, if we sell it today, it’d be for less than the purchase price 20 years ago. (About 30k of a “loss”). Factor in the down-payment he made, a year where he received zero rent from a couple who refused to leave the apartment and when they finally did, the place was trashed (like, taking a hammer to the walls for fun) and the subsequent total renovation… it was an awful investment. I wouldn’t buy a place now myself, not that I could, but neither myself of my siblings would buy a place to rent if we had the money.

    So yeah, there’s an ugly, horrible tail to the Crash which is lingering today and playing a massive role in our struggles to build even 30k homes when we could churn out 80k in a year back in 2007.

  16. Islamisation is also a big issue. Read quran 8.12 to see true face of islam.

  17. This article is one long babble of a Left Wing conspiracy theory – that the Government is purposely driving the housing crisis for nefarious ends – which has never been shown to be true.

    What I find ironic is that Left Wingers will decry Right Wing conspiracy theories like the government wanting to oppress us through hate speech laws, but then turn around and say the government is creating the housing crisis, without a hint of self-realisation.

  18. Rory Hearne. let me guess – the answer is more socialism? the state should run housing? Our already insanely high taxes shuld go up higher for high earners… and our already extremely generous social welfare should go up too.

    T

  19. That is one of the most comprehensive and well researched/cited articles I’ve seen on the housing crisis so far.

  21. It’s a gift for grifters like Hearn too, what profile would this bell have and how many books would he have sold if there was no housing crisis?

  22. Australia has just announced that they’ll be halving their immigration numbers over the next couple of years and tightening the rules around certain immigrants, mainly international students, while improving their immigration processes for skilled migrants so as to continue attracting badly needed workers in areas with shortages. Mainly to help ease the pressure on the demand side of the housing supply.

    So is Australia ‘far right’ now? Or is it fair to say that this is just a common sense and rational approach for a country that’s trying to get their house more in order? Why are we not having discussions on our own immigration laws and the types and levels of immigration we wish to see as a nation? Everything is just labelled far right here and the discussion is shut down as if everyone who takes issue with what’s happening is a racist.

    Also, most people recognise that the government are the primary ones to blame for a terrible effort on housing, they’ve completely failed the population in this area and have no coherent long-term plan at all. Blaming individual migrants for coming to a supposedly wealthy, developed country to get a better life for themselves is nonsensical, but we can and should be able to discuss the issues with immigration levels overall as it is quite obviously contributing towards the demand side of things in the equation of supply:demand.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-67609963

  23. The reality is there is no ‘fear mongering’ necessary, more immigration (from any source) equates to higher rents in every pocket of the country. More competition for *anything* raises prices.

  24. I would almost say that blaming all this on vulture funds and capitalism is also a conspiracy theory. The honest truth is that the people voting against housing are politicians supported with the votes of homeowners. It’s not some global capitalist conspiracy, instead it is John and Mary who don’t want a new apartment block or housing estate set up near them.

    Capitalists will seek out any excess profits and flood with supply until the excess profit doesn’t exist anymore. Delve into the accounts of any of the REITs or property groups and their chief risk is more supply. Changing the rules around planning like they have in other markets and I have no doubt we will see supply increase. To do that requires John and Mary to vote a politician who will back it though…

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