Affordable Housing Schemes

Sleepy

It's hardly a valid excuse for doing it though is it?

I mean, if I just decided I couldn't be bothered doing part of my job which would cost the company I work for an equivalent figure, I'd be fired and rightly so. Why are we letting the government away with it?

iguana

I believe that there is a place for affordable housing, but not the way it is done in Ireland. In the UK most affordable housing or shared ownership schemes give priority to key workers, which I believe is right.

There are certain people who are necessary to maintain our society. Nurses, fire-fighters, sanitation workers, teachers....etc. But these people don't earn a salary which allows them to buy in certain areas of the country. And I think it is obvious that if they aren't helped to purchase a home it is likely that they will move to different areas, or change their profession or the way they practise it. (Eg., a nurse in a public hospital may seek employment in private practice where they can earn a higher salary but are no longer serving the publics interest. They are obviously not going to suddenly be given a wage which helps them own a home in the area they provide a key service, so I see helping them to own a home as essential.

As for everybody else on a middle income there are schemes such as those which allow people to part build a new community and then buy the houses for the cost of the land, materials, necessary work - such as laying new water pipes. Anyone who is willing to spend 8 months working 20-30 hours a week on top of their regular job building an estate is entitled to one of those houses at a reduced price. There aren't enough schemes like this, but I think they should be the way forward. And they also help build a community as your neighbour isn't just the guy who lives next store, but the guy who helped you build your wall while you laid his tiles.

Nevyn

Affordible housing is the shared ownership sheme here with the recivers of the house paying a mortguage on one half and a nominal rent on the other half until the first half of the mortguage is paid and then they pay off the second.

Jackie laughlin

I may have said it on this thread or perhaps it was the Aer Lingus one but acceptance of neo-liberal dogma has had three effects. Firstly, it transfers resources into private hands. Secondly, it allows lazy managers to offload their responsibilities while maintaining a facile, tough, business image. Thirdly, government and state agencies now routinely evade accountability by outsourcing. Selling off public housing stock is a part of this picture.

Some markets increase the public good, some don't. Some things are too important to be entrusted to the vagaries of the market. The profit motive can often encourage people to supply a poor product. Some entrepreneurs are creative, some are vultures trying to make a quick buck before taking off for a tax haven in the sun.

Generally speaking, the market in housing in Ireland is an abject failure. ALL markets depend for their survival on state regulation. This particular market requires firm and fast reform which could be applied if we could escape the ideological soporific of neo-liberalism.

chump

My views on the merits of this scheme are somewhat clouded by the fact that a handful of clued-up well-educated professionals (couples) who got wind of this scheme when it was first introduced managed to wrangle a top property in a top location for a fraction of its true value. People earning 20/30k this year in many jobs may very soon be on 50/60k and soon again be top earners.

Now I do genuinely believe that there's greater transparancy and competition today with these schemes which has lead to 'needier' people being provided for (young low earning families).