Our major issue as a country

runawaybishop wrote: »

Clearly you are taking through your hoop. We haven't built any houses for a decade, that's why we have a shortage of house. Not because Mick and Paddy are back from Australia.

I love the way these arguments tend to a false dilemma. We haven’t built enough houses could be a reason. Immigration could be a reason. Both could be a reason. Obviously net positive immigration affects house prices by increasing demand. Since I believe immigration to be largely benign - this just means we have to build even more houses. By hook or by crook.

Samuel T. Cogley wrote: »

It doesn't matter where they're from. I'm more than happy to see people from Mayo rather than Mumbai coming to take X job but they won't. And further more it doesn't matter a person from Mayo still needs a home. I know exactly how supply and demand works and until we have a large cohort of people who say, do ya know what I'm not gonna claim the dole or go to University I'm going to flip burgers, you're going to have immigration.

This argument is totally spurious. Plenty of Irish people work in low end minimum wage jobs.

In 2010 we had empty houses and people saying we built too much with no demand.

Now everyone wants a house, how can the government forecast this?

Samuel T. Cogley wrote: »

With relative ease if we're honest.

No he’s right. It’s nearly impossible to forecast. In fact in 2010 people thought we would have a housing overhang for generations.

Fann Linn wrote: »

Built too many houses in the wrong place is the problem ie Tulsk, Frenchpark, Scramogue, Ballaghaderreen, Coonfad and on and on and on......

I don’t believe that.

I seen many ghost estates in good parts of Dublin.

Everyone just wants a house now in the area of their choosing.

Life doesn’t work like that.

Homelessness is not just an Irish problem. You can find similar discussions in England, San Francisco, LA, New York and anywhere there is a jobs demand and many people coming looking for high paid jobs. Most other housing crisis areas also have a problem with rich foreign buyers buying property in high prestige areas like London, LA etc denying locals the chance to get a house in their local areas unless they are very high earners. The US west coast has many Chinese children of rich Chinese industrialists and well connected party members buying up houses that lie empty most of the time. Similar story with London and Russian oligarchs and other people that the working people of the liberal democracies of the West haven't a hope of competing against in the quest for housing in the right areas.

It is very revealing that the sons and daughters of such super rich Chinese and Russian people can also afford the very high education costs to achieve employment in very high paying jobs in the legitimate sectors of the economy and will in time displace ordinary workers in those sectors. Many of our universities are now populated with foreign students paying full non EU fees and full rentals in Dublin, one of the most expensive places to rent in Europe. It doesn't take a genius to figure that the average Irish citizen cannot compete with these people and will be displaced out of the high paying jobs in the future.

A concerted effort will have to be made to provide affordable housing for students of Irish middle class families and some provision to reduce the cost of housing in high job areas or otherwise the Irish middle class will be wiped out.
They will no longer be able to afford to live in the areas where there are jobs and won't be able to move to areas where there are houses but no jobs.

Land banks need to be set up to build huge public housing schemes to provide a buffer against high rents. A different way of building houses needs to be urgently found similar in scope to Henry Fords changing of the infant motor car industry in the early 20th cent. People need the housing equivalent of the model T to get themselves into affordable housing.