hatrickpatrick wrote: » Housing should be a right, because it is a need.
Roger_007 wrote: » hatrickpatrick wrote: » Housing should be a right, because it is a need. So, if all citizens decide to exercise their right to a home, then homes will have to be provided on demand to any adult who wants one? Also, if a home is a right, no one would have to buy one or pay rent for one? The state would simply have to provide enough homes for everyone free of charge? I cannot see that working out well.:eek:
hatrickpatrick wrote: » Not everything is subject to the free market. For instance, in Ireland we have made the decision that primary education, healthcare, public transport and many other essential or even quasi-essential aspects of daily living should not be subject to the free market. I am advocating that housing be added to this list.
oceanman wrote: 300k is the avarage price of the house in the current market, it dosent cost anywhere near that to build it...
pgj2015 wrote: » that is not a problem, fair play to the rich for getting richer, its better than sitting around doing nothing, having as many kids as you want even though you live in a hotel (at the tax payers expense) and then whingeing and moaning that the government wont give you a free 6 bed house beside your family.
Markcheese wrote: » Well site value ain't cheap (but state authorities have land banks), vat is a huge component, as is labour(which is taxed) , so no it wouldn't cost 300k to provide each house, but it still would cost at least 80 to 100 thousand (exclusive of site and utilities) to provide small basic unit of accommodation... But that could be well worthwhile with private rents being so high... Helping those on the "bottom of the housing ladder" (ie. No other option but homelessness) and taking some of the "heat" out of the current rental market...
oceanman wrote: » I agree with all that, so why are the government not doing it right now?
Tabnabs wrote: » The problem I have with this logic is that it attracts a very vocal cohort who ultimately seek to make housing a right rather than a need. When we bought our house, we managed our expectations and moved accordingly. There was no way we could afford the areas close to our families. We adjusted our expectations and got on with it. That kind of pragmatic thinking is missing from this debate.
Eric Cartman wrote: » being unemployed is (sadly) not a crime.
Galwayguy35 wrote: » I'm getting sick of seeing McVerry on the TV as well dismissing every strategy the Government bring in while offering no solutions himself.
PJW wrote: » I can’t understand how “families” in emergency accommodation feel they have a right to a house and it’s the right of the government bodies to get them one.
Colonel Claptrap wrote: » Housing is not subject to the free market. -LPT -4% rent pressure zones -FTB tax rebate -DIRT tax rebate on savings used to buy a home -tennants cannot be kicked out unless landlord is selling or refurbishing -HAP scheme -social housing -the existence of PRTB -interest relief on borrowings -stamp duty -restrictive tennancy periods -CPO of vacant dwellings All of these are distortions of the 'free market' which apparently exists in Irish housing. I don't buy it.
My mother had been living (with seven other people) in what was essentially a one-room cottage in the Liberties; my father grew up in a little hovel off the Dublin quays. The “market” never had and never would give them a decent place to live – the State did so instead. For all the problems, people in Crumlin had a secure roof over their heads and the chance to build a good community. We had homes. Why could the State do this in the hungry 1930s and the postwar 1940s but not now? Not because we can’t but because, as Enda Kenny put it last week, “interference in the market” must be avoided. The desperation to avoid the simple conclusion that government should build houses for people who need them is about ideology, not resources. Fine Gael, in particular, seems incapable of understanding housing as anything other than a market. It is striking that the decline in the building of social housing in Ireland follows directly from the rise of so called “free market” ideology in the Thatcher/Reagan era. In the mid-1970s, social housing made up a third of all new houses. The shift in which that proportion dropped to just 5 per cent was as disastrous economically as it was socially – the property bubble could not have inflated without it. And still, after all we’ve been through, 75 per cent of the Government’s promised “social housing” is to be built (supposedly) by the private sector. There is an almost obsessive fear of stating the obvious – that a large proportion of people will never be decently housed by “the market”. Those citizens need a State that’s not afraid to clear the ground of narrow ideology and build on the foundations of real human needs. That might involve relearning another forgotten word – republic.
hatrickpatrick wrote: » I am simply advocating for more social housing, which is already on your list. Nobody should be priced out of having a home. I am not suggesting, as others have said, that people should have a right to live on a particular street or to live in a five bedroom mansion, I am merely proposing something akin to a universal basic income but with regard to a dwelling - we should build enough social housing that everybody who earns less than the amount required to rent on the private market can afford to rent social housing instead. There shouldn't be anybody homeless because they cannot afford somewhere to live - that's where the state should step in and provide a minimum living standard below which it is impossible to fall. Again, this is in no way outlandish. That's exactly how education, emergency healthcare, and many other areas of Irish life already work. I am arguing that the principle of a minimum living standard be extended to housing, and that that minimum living standard should simply be having an ongoing (as in, not merely day-to-day and insecure) roof over one's head. It should be impossible to be unable to afford somewhere to live, just as it is impossible to be unable to afford treatment if you suddenly have a heart attack in the middle of Grafton St. There are certain things we as a state have decided to guarantee to all citizens regardless of financial concerns, in order to ensure a minimum quality of life - emergency healthcare is one such example. I am suggesting that housing should be another such example and that we should simply take the 1930s Herbert Simms route of building enough social housing to bridge the discrepancy between wages and housing costs. In other words, if there are ten people earning enough to afford €200 a month in rent, and there are no rental rooms below €300 a month, the government should build ten social housing units and charge each of those ten people their affordable €200 a week to rent them. Simple as that.We have employed this policy as a nation in the past. I am not suggesting something outlandish or new. Crumlin, Drimnagh, Summerhill, Gloucester Place, Sallynoggin etc were all built directly by local government in response to a housing shortage. There weren't enough houses on the market which were affordable by ordinary people, so the council built its own and rented them at an affordable price. It isn't rocket science - it's something we used to do in this country right up until the end of the 1980s, or possibly even the mid 1990s. I'm not entirely sure when the moronic policy of handing the entire provision of social housing over to private developers was implemented, but it's quite clear that it has been an unmitigated and total disaster ever since. So we should revert to our pre-2000s policy. Simple as that.https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/fintan-o-toole-opposition-to-social-housing-is-matter-of-ideology-not-economics-1.2397695 I've been saying this for years and years - the root of this issue is in the post-Reagan/Thatcher policy era of the free market sacred cow. F*ck the free market, if it isn't providing society with what society needs.
blanch152 wrote: » Government has provided money, resources and legislation to local authorities. Yet, still Dublin City Council refuses to allow high-rise and high-density housing. Until that changes, the problem will remain.
hatrickpatrick wrote: » Of course this is also part of the problem. I still feel that the root of the issue is the ideological / policy position of "the free market is sacred and the government does not directly impinge upon it", IE we don't do what we used to and directly hire builders and architects to build housing which would be 100% owned by the councils, who would then administer the renting thereof on a long term basis. This policy worked in the past, the current policy does not work, ergo we need to revert. It's just not that complicated. If you own a shop and you find that your sales plummet after you change your internal lighting from warm-yellow to cold-blue, do you then operate for years upon years with the cold-blue lighting and constantly scratch your head saying "I just don't know why our business has fallen apart"? Government policy changed in the late 1980s / early 1990s, that change in policy has been a f*cking nightmare since day one, let's simply change back. Very, very simple stuff.
Baron de Charlus wrote: » We still do directly build local authority housing. The problem is that, for the moment at least, we're not building enough. Admittedly, it's hard to quickly scale up construction to the levels needed, but the problem was foreseeable and they should have started ramping it up sooner.
hatrickpatrick wrote: » Where do we, still? All of the big projects in recent times have involved selling the actual land itself for the mixed use developments, not merely hiring builders to build new units on that land while retaining the land and all units on it in 100% council ownership.
A €20 million estate of more than 60 council houses and apartments is to be built by Dublin City Council in Ballyfermot, more than eight years since a regeneration project for the site was shelved. Cornamona Court in Ballyfermot will be the largest housing estate built by the council since the property crash, and one of the few to be directly built by the local authority in several years
Baron de Charlus wrote: » Cornamona Court in Ballyfermot for example:
Consonata wrote: » "One of the first in several years" being the important point. It's a good start yet 60 houses is meagre enough.
Baron de Charlus wrote: » We still do directly build local authority housing.
hatrickpatrick wrote: » Where do we, still? All of the big projects in recent times have involved selling the actual land itself
Baron de Charlus wrote: » I agree. We need to be building more alright. But I think for a single development, 60 is enough. What we need are more developments.
recedite wrote: » What do people think of NGO's owning and running the nation's stock of social housing? Can they make a better job of it than the local authorities?For example
Tony EH wrote: » There are many, many, people who "manage" the "expectations" but will still never afford a home under the current circumstances, despite the two people in a given partnership working full time. That's the reality of the situation for a lot of folk today. There's "pragmatisim" and there's "bollocks" All too often, it's the latter that too may people experience, despite doing their level best and engaging in the former.
hatrickpatrick wrote: » Cluid have done an amazing job of regenerating many of the developments they have been put in charge of.
Baron de Charlus wrote: » PPPs came about because, while councils had plenty of sites, what they lacked was sufficient capital to develop/redevelop them. The days of whacking up a few hundred council flats on a site and nothing else are gone. We only have to look at the likes of Michael's Estate in Inchicore to see how that worked out. So instead you need something with a mix of public and private housing and decent amenities. And that costs more to develop. Dublin City Council did actually attempt to go it alone with O'Devaney gardens in 2012 but couldn't raise the cash to do it.Now, I guess the question is, if the outcome is going to be the same, a development with a mix of public and private ownership, does it really matter who builds the thing? Or, to put it another way, is it better to have a site lying undeveloped for lack of funds or have it redeveloped by a private developer?
