Former top housing official claims homelessness in Ireland is 'normal'

Wheeliebin30

https://www.thejournal.ie/conor-skeehan-homelessness-normal-4428104-Jan2019/

What’s this???

Someone speaking sense and the truth about homelessness and charities receiving hundreds of millions from tax payers??

Watch him get crucified by the usual free house brigade.

Plumbthedepths

Another free housing thread......

Wheeliebin30

Plumbthedepths wrote: »

Another free housing thread......

No just very good points raised by someone which is a view we don’t hear on the homeless issue.

DrumSteve

Wheeliebin30 wrote: »

No just very good points raised by someone which is a view we don’t hear on the homeless issue.

We obviously do hear them.

There is an article you posted. You've started a thread.

Plumbthedepths

Wheeliebin30 wrote:

No just very good points raised by someone which is a view we don’t hear on the homeless issue.

Many things which we now view as unacceptable were once normal.

WesternZulu

Leo got crucified when he said that Ireland had a pretty standard rate of homelessness compared to similar countries when referencing a OECD report.

I expect the same to happen here.

By building the issue up to be something it's not you are devaluing the nature of the topic. We can only address homelessness in a meaningful manner by being honest about what is, and what isn't, categorised as homeless.

Wheeliebin30

DrumSteve wrote: »

We obviously do hear them.

There is an article you posted. You've started a thread.

First time I’ve heard anyone raise the points he did last night.

mikemac2

If we managed to end homelessness would that mean all the charity executives and staff lose their jobs?

Do they have a self interest in always having something to do?

Mrsmum

I think people are copping on to the fact that too many charities are creaming way too much money off the top of this industry.

Plumbthedepths

He does raise a couple of good points. 2500 full time ? F**k that. One state agency get rid of the charities. Also the selling off of social housing stock is idiotic. However FG are author's of the present crisis to a degree.

Wheeliebin30

Plumbthedepths wrote: »

He does raise a couple of good points. 2500 full time ? F**k that. One state agency get rid of the charities. Also the selling off of social housing stock is idiotic. However FG are author's of the present crisis to a degree.

How are they?

enricoh

Iirc there was 100ish rough sleepers in dublin one night last month.
It'll get to the stage charities fighting each other- he's ours, no we had him first, sign a contract bud will ya!

begbysback

If we eradicated homelessness, would the homeless of other countries then migrate to Ireland?

Cockford Ollie

It's the great homeless swindle.

Self registering as homeless, live in accommodation for free, turning down accommodation because it's not in the exact area you want. It's one big scam, and the majority of the 10,000 are gaming the system.

Plumbthedepths

Wheeliebin30 wrote:

How are they?

After almost 9 years of FG lead governments you have to be joking asking that question.

Mad_maxx

Mrsmum wrote: »

I think people are copping on to the fact that too many charities are creaming way too much money off the top of his industry.

Plus the entire media are a bunch of left wing activists, they never shut up about the homeless situation

Wheeliebin30

Plumbthedepths wrote: »

After almost 9 years of FG lead governments you have to be joking asking that question.

No I’m not.

Tell me what they should have done when they came into power with the IMF here?

You know we only balanced the books two years ago and they left.

We hadn’t a pot to piss in yet we should have built houses for people who contribute nothing while we had too many houses idle that no one wanted????


Go on so tell me what they should have done and show me the financials of how it would have worked.

ohnonotgmail

Wheeliebin30 wrote: »

No I’m not.

Tell me what they should have done when they came into power with the IMF here?

You know we only balanced the books two years ago and they left.

We hadn’t a pot to piss in yet we should have built houses for people who contribute nothing while we had too many houses idle that no one wanted????


Go on so tell me what they should have done and show me the financials of how it would have worked.

Ah yes but the idle houses were not where these people want to live. Too far from their mothers.

Grayson

He's right to say that it's normal. That doesn't however mean we shouldn't do something.

Lung cancer is normal. However we still run campaigns to help prevent it and we treat people who have it. Just because something is normal doesn't mean it's dismissed.

Same with housing. I expect people will be made homeless for many different reasons. Some economic and some social. We should have systems in place to deal with them and we should have systems that help prevent it.

Plumbthedepths

Wheeliebin30 wrote:

No I’m not.

Dude I'm not going to engage with you over FG, I have seen you defend the indefensible from FG in the same manner that SF supporters defend the same bs from their party. It's tedious boring and repetitive.

LotharIngum

1st get rid of all funding for housing charities. Then if they want to be a charity they really will be a charity not a bunch of people being paid by the state. I personally know someone working for one of those charities who rent out their property. They will not rent to HAP tenants, which I don't blame them for, but they are being a hypocrite.

Then you make a rule that if you refuse housing anywhere in the country you are straight to the bottom of the housing list.


And another rule that if you get pregnant when on the housing list, straight to the bottom. Your priority should be to not make your situation worse.


Then there should be a 10 year lease on a council house. If you do anything wrong you are out. Also if after the 10 years you don't need such a big house you are downsized.


There is too much abuse of the system and that's why it doesn't work. Fix the system so that it doesn't encourage abuse. Only then can you fix the problem. The system as it is, just creates the problem.

Wheeliebin30

Plumbthedepths wrote: »

Dude I'm not going to engage with you over FG, I have seen you defend the indefensible from FG in the same manner that SF supporters defend the same bs from their party. It's tedious boring and repetitive.

Right so you have nothing to back up your claim and are running away from a debate.

Bye now.

Gimme A Pound

I wouldn't have even contemplated voting FG pre 2016 and I don't think they're perfect but I genuinely would like someone to give a solid reason - without reference to fascists from the 1930s or any of the other bandwagon bluster - why they are so terrible, and why Leo is so awful and Enda was so awful.

It is something I really would like to see.

Plumbthedepths

Wheeliebin30 wrote:

Right so you have nothing to back up your claim and are running away from a debate.

No I told you I won't engage with someone who defends the indefensible no matter the topic because of party loyalty.

EdgeCase

Well the UN special rapporteur on the subject was talking about how homelessness across all developed economies, with the notable exception of Finland, was rising. She explained it as being caused by an increase in the speculation on housing and the treatment of housing as a commodity to be traded and a failure to build social housing in recent decades.

It may be normal by OECD comparison but it doesn't mean it's right and it's problems like this that are leading to political instability in a lot of countries right now as disaffected people lash out as in France or turn to populism in the US, UK etc.

I'd rather see Ireland aspiring to be the best, not just accepting the lowest common denominator as being all we need to do.

Also the policies are clearly very broken. We are spending vast amounts on emergency accommodation that's been normalised as a solution to a lack of social and affordable housing. That's a waste of money being driven by a refusal to accept the reality that the market is not working or delivering results that are in the national interest or the interest of the greater good.

Wheeliebin30

Plumbthedepths wrote: »

No I told you I won't engage with someone who defends the indefensible no matter the topic because of party loyalty.

If you put a good point forward I’ll accept it but you’re avoiding it because you don’t have one.

AlanG

He seemed to make a lot of very valid points. With the amount that has been spent on the problem it is definitely time to start approaching it form a different angle. Too much time is being given to people who are good PR for charities but have no real strategic thinking.

Fiftyfilthy

Cockford Ollie wrote: »

It's the great homeless swindle.

Self registering as homeless, live in accommodation for free, turning down accommodation because it's not in the exact area you want. It's one big scam, and the majority of the 10,000 are gaming the system.

100% agree

It disgusts me the number of lazy slobs doing this, I hate them so much.

EdgeCase

You'll always get a % of people gaming any system. That's human nature. It doesn't take away from the reality that there is a major housing squeeze in Dublin, Cork and a few other areas. That's entirely down to an abnormal lack of supply that is clearly caused by the 2008 collapse which entirely wiped out the residential construction sector.

The impacts of that were huge and despite a few years of strong economic recovery, that sector has been very slow to recover and extremely cautious about scaling up.

Ireland did go through one of the worst economic crashes seen in a developed economy, since the great depression anyway. You can't really expect to snap your fingers and have everything back to normal and that's why the housing system is not working.

I don't think government policy has been adequately dealing with it either. There needs to be a very radical rethink.

Fiftyfilthy

EdgeCase wrote: »

You'll always get a % of people gaming any system. That's human nature. It doesn't take away from the reality that there is a major housing squeeze in Dublin, Cork and a few other areas. That's entirely down to an abnormal lack of supply that is clearly caused by the 2008 collapse which entirely wiped out the residential construction sector.

The impacts of that were huge and despite a few years of strong economic recovery, that sector has been very slow to recover and extremely cautious about scaling up.

The genuine people who are struggling to pay sky high rents by the skin of their teeth and working to do this are ignored

They are ignored and the lazy lazy slob vermin who breed like rats are the ones that officials bend over backwards to house

It’s ****ing wrong

conorhal

Wheeliebin30 wrote: »

If you put a good point forward I’ll accept it but you’re avoiding it because you don’t have one.

How about this, stop selling NAMA properties at massive discounts to vulture funds and sell them to citizens? A block of apartments near me were sold at less then 50 grand a unit to a vulture fund, why could these not have been sold at the same discount to people on the housing list?
FG has handled the housing crisis abominably, from failing to address the problem and fannying around the edges it with legislation that actually made it worse, to a complete failure to substantially reform public housing and build some, this governement is a failure on every level.
FFS, when we hadn't an arse in our trousers in the 50's we were building 18,000 social homes a year at one point, so I don't accept the governments excuses. I'd rate their performance a solid 3/10

Plumbthedepths

Wheeliebin30 wrote:

If you put a good point forward I’ll accept it but you’re avoiding it because you don’t have one.

Answered you already, you don't accept any failings of FG no matter what. So absolutely pointless engaging with someone with that mindset . So save your time and find someone else to go around in circles with.

Plumbthedepths

conorhal wrote:

How about this, stop selling NAMA properties at massive discounts to vulture funds and sell them to citizens? A block of apartments near me were sold at less then 50 grand a unit to a vulture fund, why could these not have been sold at the same discount to people on the housing list? FG had handled the housing crisis abominably, from fannying around the edges of the problem with legislation that actually made it worse rather then addressing it to a complete failure to substantially reform public housing and build. FFS, when we hadn't an arse in our trousers in the 50's we were building 18,000 social homes a year at one point, so I don't accept the governments excuses. I'd rate their performance a solid 3/10

You are wasting your time. No money for housing, yet hundreds of millions was buried in the ground. Right idea implemented at the wrong time.

Grayson

Fiftyfilthy wrote: »

The genuine people who are struggling to pay sky high rents by the skin of their teeth and working to do this are ignored

They are ignored and the lazy lazy slob vermin who breed like rats are the ones that officials bend over backwards to house

It’s ****ing wrong

Ignored? You do realise there have been rent caps put in place, they're trying to cut down on AirBNB's and there's a massive expansion of house building.

Wheeliebin30

conorhal wrote: »

How about this, stop selling NAMA properties at massive discounts to vulture funds and sell them to citizens? A block of apartments near me were sold at less then 50 grand a unit to a vulture fund, why could these not have been sold at the same discount to people on the housing list?
FG has handled the housing crisis abominably, from failing to address the problem and fannying around the edges it with legislation that actually made it worse, to a complete failure to substantially reform public housing and build some, this governement is a failure on every level.
FFS, when we hadn't an arse in our trousers in the 50's we were building 18,000 social homes a year at one point, so I don't accept the governments excuses. I'd rate their performance a solid 3/10

There is no comparison to the costs now of building 18,000 houses a year now to back then.

18,000 houses a year for 2 years would bankrupt the country again.

We have 600 million to spare in the budget and you think we can afford to build 18,000 social houses a year at a cost of probably 4 or 5 billion???

Come back to the real world.


And you think people on the housing list have 50 grand to buy apartments?

Or that they would want to live in an apartment?

Interested to hear more about these 50,000 euro apartments though, any info about them?

Dravokivich

enricoh wrote: »

Iirc there was 100ish rough sleepers in dublin one night last month.
It'll get to the stage charities fighting each other- he's ours, no we had him first, sign a contract bud will ya!

I share a spare room with my son. Homelessness isn't just rough sleeping. There's also being unable to obtain a home.

Gimme A Pound

Plumbthedepths wrote: »

No I told you I won't engage with someone who defends the indefensible no matter the topic because of party loyalty.

Would you engage with me? I'm not affiliated with the party and certainly wouldn't have a problem with valid criticism but I still don't get the hate and would like to know what it's about. What's indefensible? Is it not true that they have made some positive changes despite the mess left by the previous crowd?

EdgeCase wrote: »

You'll always get a % of people gaming any system. That's human nature. It doesn't take away from the reality that there is a major housing squeeze in Dublin, Cork and a few other areas. That's entirely down to an abnormal lack of supply that is clearly caused by the 2008 collapse which entirely wiped out the residential construction sector.

The impacts of that were huge and despite a few years of strong economic recovery, that sector has been very slow to recover and extremely cautious about scaling up.

Ireland did go through one of the worst economic crashes seen in a developed economy, since the great depression anyway. You can't really expect to snap your fingers and have everything back to normal and that's why the housing system is not working.

I don't think government policy has been adequately dealing with it either. There needs to be a very radical rethink.

I agree with most of that - just not the human nature bit. Those freeloaders are the exception, most people don't do what they do.

MarkHenderson

Plumbthedepths wrote: »

Dude I'm not going to engage with you over FG, I have seen you defend the indefensible from FG in the same manner that SF supporters defend the same bs from their party. It's tedious boring and repetitive.

It's pointless debating with the OP. He/she constantly seems to have it in for people from disadvantaged areas and people in social housing in general.

Say's it all when you see a thread title and know who's started it without even looking,.

raze_them_all_

conorhal wrote: »

How about this, stop selling NAMA properties at massive discounts to vulture funds and sell them to citizens? A block of apartments near me were sold at less then 50 grand a unit to a vulture fund, why could these not have been sold at the same discount to people on the housing list?
FG has handled the housing crisis abominably, from failing to address the problem and fannying around the edges it with legislation that actually made it worse, to a complete failure to substantially reform public housing and build some, this governement is a failure on every level.
FFS, when we hadn't an arse in our trousers in the 50's we were building 18,000 social homes a year at one point, so I don't accept the governments excuses. I'd rate their performance a solid 3/10

Why couldnt they be sold to people like me?? Paying a grand a mo th I rent so I can't save for my own place. Why is it now that only people on housing lists deserve these discount houses yet people like me can keep paying massive rates. Sell me the apartment and people like me then boom thousands of new rental properties

Seth Brundle

conorhal wrote: »

How about this, stop selling NAMA properties at massive discounts to vulture funds and sell them to citizens? A block of apartments near me were sold at less then 50 grand a unit to a vulture fund

Firstly what NAMA property was this?
Secondly, you do know that "vulture funds" are just investment funds? I've a pension with Irish Life. Does that make me an investor in a vulture fund? It's a stupid term used to create a sense of injustice.

Red_Wake

From the Colosseum of Rome to the current shower in Focus Ireland, the charity sector has always been more about profiting off the poor than solving their problems.

tretorn

That man is a rock of sense.

There are about seven hundred charities involved in the housing sector, cull them all every last one of them.

The Government is funding them and wasting our money. Threshold is advising tenants to over hold and Threshold is funded by the Government so effectively it is Government policy to advise tenants to squat illegally in a private landlords property. This means people who have vacant houses which they could rent are leaving them empty to deteriorate because its not worth the hassle of renting to someone who wont move when asked. Hence more people homeless and looking to the Government to house them.

kuntboy

Dravokivich wrote: »

I share a spare room with my son. Homelessness isn't just rough sleeping. There's also being unable to obtain a home.

Oh boo ****ing hoo. Why don't you go to the 3rd world and witness real homelessness? They get no room. If you can't afford a "home", maybe that's your fault

mikemac2

kuntboy wrote: »

Oh boo ****ing hoo. Why don't you go to the 3rd world and witness real homelessness? They get no room. If you can't afford a "home", maybe that's your fault

Username checks out ^^^

JohnnyFlash

Not half enough attention and oversight is directed towards the charity sector, especially those operating in the homelessness space. Many of them are little more than fronts for trade unions such as Unite, or as a place to give a former ‘community activist’ a 6 figure salary. You know there’s greasy paws in the till when you have days where there are more homeless charities than rough sleepers. Someone needs to lift that slate up and see what’s crawling underneath.

kuntboy

Seth Brundle wrote: »

Firstly what NAMA property was this?
Secondly, you do know that "vulture funds" are just investment funds? I've a pension with Irish Life. Does that make me an investor in a vulture fund? It's a stupid term used to create a sense of injustice.

"Investor" is a euphemism used to justify blatant exploitation of other people's hard work. But whatever keeps your conscience clean, I suppose.

Wheeliebin30

MarkHenderson wrote: »

It's pointless debating with the OP. He/she constantly seems to have it in for people from disadvantaged areas and people in social housing in general.

Say's it all when you see a thread title and know who's started it without even looking,.

Yet many here agree with me.

Funny that ay....

suicide_circus

Homelessness is an industry.

kuntboy

mikemac2 wrote: »

Username checks out ^^^

Your point?

Sweet.Science

Social housing made sense in the 80s when anyone with a job could buy a house for 20 grand .

Now working people cant get on the property ladder while people who dont work get a free 3 bed semi

DontThankMe

There is no homeless crisis in comparison to other EU countries homeless levels in Ireland are similar to those in other countries around Europe.