The privatisation of social housing

lawred2 · 13-10-2018 10:57AM

seamus wrote: »

Any comparison with previous decades' output is pretty silly.

The government were building cheap houses because nobody else would.

We don't want or need the state to big big sprawling public housing developments anymore.

The thrust of the article is fine, but the harken back to when Ireland was an economic septic tank is fairly disappointing.

Economic septic tank - brilliant turn of phrase

myshirt · 13-10-2018 10:58AM

People have to learn to paddle their own canoe, but this requires investment and generational change. As a State we have two choices, spend it at the start or spend it at the end. If you spend it at the start you spend it on a productive asset. If you spend it at the end you piss it against the wind. But whatever you do, you spend it. And it costs.

Our problem in this country is that we are split down the middle into two broad groups. Those driven by pure insatiable greed. The type who if they look at a group wedding photo they immediately look for themselves. The type constantly patting themselves on the back and believing they are where they are on the back of nothing but their own effort. The type who believe the only difference between them and a man in the backarse of Timbuktu is the man in Timbuktu needs to pull up his socks.

The second type are those paralysed by fear. Those who won't pursue change, be it personal or for their community, because they do not have the courage to do it, or someone close to them who they love just told them they can't do it. The type who are scared. Live hand to mouth. Month to month. Payslip to payslip. Run through the rat race and don't step out of line. In this group some survive, and others don't. And others fare very, very badly. At this lower end it's a life of misery from cradle to grave. Drug problems, crime, poverty, precarious employment, precarious housing, poor education, suicide amongst friends, and all the poor coping strategies that develop off that right into adulthood.

But group number 1, especially public servants, don't see the link. These people would f#ck your wife, look you straight in the eye and not back up.

I believe in the youth of this country though, and I truly believe the public servant baby boomers and their early genxer offspring will get it in the neck in within the next 10 years. The outrageous wage bill and years of f#ck you to everyone else will come to an end. The youth will rise up to help those less fortunate, we will build those houses, and we will give equality of opportunity to people to eventually paddle their own canoe and not be intergenerational dependent.

Franz Von Peppercorn · 13-10-2018 10:59AM

Wheeliebin30 wrote: »

How many houses do we need?

I heard Sinn Fein saying 150,000 at least.

At 300,000 a pop that’s nearly 50 billion.

You’re confusing the retail cost with the build cost. You are also confusing the cost to developers (including land purchases and fees) with what public developers could do at a fraction of the cost.

As for where the money comes from - you keep asking that in these threads and it keeps getting answered. The councils take out a loan to build and pay back those (low interest) loans by saving money on HAP and instead of paying private rent, have rental income.

Franz Von Peppercorn · 13-10-2018 11:03AM

Guy:Incognito wrote: »

The quality of the housing is much less important than the location.

Little 2 beds in Drimnagh sell for stupid money because they are beside the Luas and handy for town.

The point is it largely sells the same as houses from the same era that were always private. So much for shoddy workmanship.

If workmanship were all that influenced the market then new houses would always be more expensive.

Wanderer78 · 13-10-2018 11:08AM

Asset price inflation rocks, along with trickle down and the rising tide, neoliberalism and neoclassical theory, yea right!

Seth Brundle · 13-10-2018 11:17AM

Doesn't Fintan O'Toole own a holiday home?
And he is critical of snobbery driving up costs?

Franz Von Peppercorn wrote: »

You’re confusing the retail cost with the build cost. You are also confusing the cost to developers (including land purchases and fees) with what public developers could do at a fraction of the cost.

So the council's would need to employ loads of brickies, carpenters, electricians, roofers, etc.
How much would that cost?

Franz Von Peppercorn wrote: »

As for where the money comes from - you keep asking that in these threads and it keeps getting answered. The councils take out a loan to build and pay back those (low interest) loans by saving money on HAP and instead of paying private rent, have rental income.

What happens when tenants decide not to pay the rent?

beauf · 13-10-2018 11:29AM

Guy:Incognito wrote: »

The quality of the housing is much less important than the location.

Little 2 beds in Drimnagh sell for stupid money because they are beside the Luas and handy for town.

I think the luas is much more of an influence in ok areas. In the least desirable locations the luas hasn't had that much effect. Probably it will eventually but just take longer.

Of this could also because they ran the luas though a lot of the most affluent areas first. Same with the Dart.

Even without the luas many of these areas would still have risen to stupid money. Almost everywhere has. Unless it's in the middle of no where or not a great area anyway.

beauf · 13-10-2018 11:31AM

Seth Brundle wrote: »

Doesn't Fintan O'Toole own a holiday home?
...

What's the big deal about dacha's sorry I mean holiday homes.

Guy:Incognito · 13-10-2018 11:34AM

Franz Von Peppercorn wrote: »

The point is it largely sells the same as houses from the same era that were always private. So much for shoddy workmanship.

If workmanship were all that influenced the market then new houses would always be more expensive.

When there's more buyers than houses then that's always going to be the case. Instantly add 150000 houses in dublin and then watch when people can be picky.

beauf · 13-10-2018 11:39AM

The same builders built both private and public housing and if a builder took shortcuts he did it to both. If anything the public housing got inspected more. But in general enforcement of standards and inspections of same is abysmal. Which is why BER ratings are so compromised.

Guy:Incognito · 13-10-2018 11:40AM

beauf wrote: »

I
Of this could also because they ran the luas though a lot of the most affluent areas first. Same with the Dart.

.

The Red and green lines opened 3 months apart.

ednwireland · 13-10-2018 11:46AM

seamus wrote: »

It wasn't. It was absolute trash. If we built like that again there'd be no end of the same people complaining that the government are letting people down with awful housing.

The publically built housing of the past has cost us multiples of the original built costs in refit and renovation costs.

do you own house ?

Any house after 20 years needs some major maintenance.

If you have new house I'd start saving now

Specialun · 13-10-2018 11:46AM

why dont they build social housing away from the city or business area’s. leave those area’s for the people that need to live there

Franz Von Peppercorn · 13-10-2018 11:54AM

Seth Brundle wrote: »

Doesn't Fintan O'Toole own a holiday home?
And he is critical of snobbery driving up costs?

So the council's would need to employ loads of brickies, carpenters, electricians, roofers, etc.
How much would that cost?

The same as a private build.

What happens when tenants decide not to pay the rent?

Still cheaper.

Maybe the best example is to simplify this to one house. The state is housing a large family in a 4 bedroomed house at the cost of near market rent. The rent is 2K+ and the house cost 400k for the private landlord to buy. Rent will increase over the lifetime of the tenants as well.

Instead of that insanity the state builds a house for much less than the retail cost. It gets a 30-40 year loan (a bond) at fixed rates. Ireland can issue bonds at close to 1% now.

Now instead of paying 2000k a month it pays the bond payments. The house also generates income. How much per month?

David McWilliams estimates the cost to build for a government is 175k.

( that’s the gross cost btw. The government immediately gets VAT, and income tax back. So a bricklayer that costs a private company 50k and prsi (ie 55k) costs the government 40k because all the taxes and prsi end in the governmeht coffers)

Latest 30 year bond rates I see for Ireland are 1.07%. So that gross cost (ie financing 175k at 1% over 30 years) for the house would be about 600 per month. Then you subtract the rental income from that cost as the state is now a landlord not a renter. Eventually the state generates gross revenue from these houses.

I would change a bit from previous forms of social housing. The houses should be rented with no furniture or white goods or even flooring and the renter will have full responsibility for everything except structural problems. This is to offset the ongoing costs.

I wouldn’t have mixed housing at all. That aggrevates people who buy at market prices. And social housing will depend on people being social not anti social. So there has to be some mechanism to evict.

Tl/dr : the government is a renter. Like all renters in the present situation it’s better to get a mortgage.

Franz Von Peppercorn · 13-10-2018 11:59AM

Guy:Incognito wrote: »

When there's more buyers than houses then that's always going to be the case. Instantly add 150000 houses in dublin and then watch when people can be picky.

Older ex council houses in good areas were the same prices during the bust as similar houses in a private estate. The government didn’t build shoddy housing. It built to the standards of the day.

Qrt · 13-10-2018 12:07PM

Specialun wrote: »

why dont they build social housing away from the city or business area’s. leave those area’s for the people that need to live there

Ah yeah let's create low-income ghettos away from any pre-existing services. That's worked great in the past!

What we need is a fundamental shift from council housing to housing association style housing. Where I live, it's clear which is association and which is council.

ShaneC93 · 13-10-2018 12:11PM

Wheeliebin30 wrote: »

How many houses do we need?

I heard Sinn Fein saying 150,000 at least.

At 300,000 a pop that’s nearly 50 billion.

There's about 90,000 on the housing waitlists right now and I believe those on HAP are not included in those figures.

It's quite telling though that despite Sinn Fein's constant outrage over the lack of housing being built, their 'Alternative Budget 2019' shows they wouldn't even increase the funding for new builds by 2x.

Also they seem to have perception that if they fund enough for 20K houses in 2019 it will mean they'll actually get all those houses in 2019 whereas in reality even a private developer starting planning on a development now would be lucky to have it majority finished by mid-2020.

Hitman3000 · 13-10-2018 12:18PM

Specialun wrote:

why dont they build social housing away from the city or business areaâ€™s. leave those areaâ€™s for the people that need to live there

So you assume everyone that needs social housing doesn't work? Why?

quadrifoglio verde · 13-10-2018 12:19PM

The biggest issue is we can't build social housing estates. Well we can but we may as well accept now that they'll become ghettos.

If you look at the housing list, you'll see that there's 37k on it in Dublin. The aim is to have 10% of all houses in every new built estate to be social and affordable housing.
So that's 370k houses that we'd need to build in order to house those 37k on the housing list in Dublin alone.
Providing of course that none of that 10% gets used for affordable housing.

We can't build that many houses in Dublin in the next five years. We don't have the infrastructure, we don't have the money, we don't have the skilled labour force to build them and we don't have the the 340k couple's needed to take out 300k plus mortgages either to purchase the other houses.

The other solution is to build like we did before. Large council housing estates to house our council housing list and accept that lots of these estates are going to become ghettos as we've seen happen previously.

ShaneC93 · 13-10-2018 12:19PM

Franz Von Peppercorn wrote: »

You’re confusing the retail cost with the build cost. You are also confusing the cost to developers (including land purchases and fees) with what public developers could do at a fraction of the cost.

300K may actually be a lowball. While the cost for many social houses does be nearer €140K-€200K, especially outside of Dublin, some councils then overpaying for other property significantly drives up the average. Like the 54 social houses that DCC is building for a cost of €500,000 each..

Also in many areas the council ends up buying at a developer's cost rate because they cannot build any housing themselves so depend on the 10-15% of private developments they can buy at cost. Dublin Bay North is a good example of this, the biggest waitlist area in Dublin by near 200% yet the available building plots is severely limited and years of the councils selling their housing stock here at cut prices rather than taking the stock back when the tenant no longer requires it has really taken its toll.

Michelin · 13-10-2018 12:25PM

Amirani wrote: »

A large proportion of the council housing built by the State was terrible. Really crap, sub-standard accommodation that was cheaply built and horrible to live in. They were often built en masse together, leading to big social issues and no-go areas in cities.

The recent phenomenon of looking back to the good old days of large scale social housing projects is utter rubbish. The State probably does need to build more to fix the issue, but not like it has done in the past, which is a completely failed model. In fairness, most recent social housing projects the State has delivered are of a much higher standard, but they are very expensive.

Failed maybe in Ballymum etc...but not in most small to large towns across the country...I grew up in a large estate in a medium size town. My father worked hard we were educated...most of the neighbours have the same story...now the current generation are renting in run down PRIVATE estates not having the stability to know if they will be in the same house in a couple of years time.

ShaneC93 · 13-10-2018 12:27PM

quadrifoglio verde wrote: »

The other solution is to build like we did before. Large council housing estates to house our council housing list and accept that lots of these estates are going to become ghettos as we've seen happen previously.

Unfortunately we may be heading back there.. The SDCC has just approved a development in Clondalkin that will be 30% social housing. 30% is way too high. There has been a number of studies showing the crime-rate and land-value for an area start to drastically increase for areas with more than 15% social housing.

I'd love to see them switch this to 10-15% social housing with 30-40% 'affordable' / cut-price units instead. Providing more affordable units will help ease the housing crisis faster than building more social housing estates.

Markcheese · 13-10-2018 12:33PM

To be honest the government just does what's easy... Bumbles along, they "invested" built loads of social houses, (and built loads of problems, through failure to upgrade/and maintain them, as well as social problems)
So then they just paid the rent (rent allowance) and that was grand, less hassle than building their own, and probably as cheap... At first...
During the boom they could have built part 5 houses, to curb any property bubble (as the scheme was designed), but it was easier to just pay the rent allowance out of stamp duty...
The **** hit the fan when we still had a need for more housing during the bust, but a bust construction sector, but money was short so it was easier to do feic all..(and protect site values /and so we've a housing crisis ....)

Markcheese · 13-10-2018 12:46PM

Specialun wrote: »

why dont they build social housing away from the city or business area’s. leave those area’s for the people that need to live there

You do know that most of the residents of social housing are actual people.. You know, with families, school, college, jobs, lives ect..
That was what ballymun was

Guy:Incognito · 13-10-2018 12:48PM

Franz Von Peppercorn wrote: »

Older ex council houses in good areas were the same prices during the bust as similar houses in a private estate. The government didn’t build shoddy housing. It built to the standards of the day.

I deliberately took the bit about poor build quality out before I replied to the post. I talked about small houses in certain areas.

People aren't willing to buy 2 bed houses for families with 6 kids anymore. The prices in these areas are artificially high because of shortage and convenience to the city. There's a lot of adults and kids nowadays that baulk at the idea of sharing a room.

Franz Von Peppercorn · 13-10-2018 01:48PM

Guy:Incognito wrote: »

I deliberately took the bit about poor build quality out before I replied to the post. I talked about small houses in certain areas.

People aren't willing to buy 2 bed houses for families with 6 kids anymore. The prices in these areas are artificially high because of shortage and convenience to the city. There's a lot of adults and kids nowadays that baulk at the idea of sharing a room.

Which is ok because nobody has 6 kids anymore. Some obvious exceptions aside.

And families are buying 2 bedrooms with the hope of extensions. I did that.

beauf · 13-10-2018 02:12PM

Guy:Incognito wrote: »

The Red and green lines opened 3 months apart.

Granted. How much of it is North of the Liffey was more where I was going.

beauf · 13-10-2018 02:14PM

Hitman3000 wrote: »

So you assume everyone that needs social housing doesn't work? Why?

I think more and more people who are working are no longer able to afford housing

Specialun · 13-10-2018 02:52PM

Hitman3000 wrote: »

So you assume everyone that needs social housing doesn't work? Why?

i didnt assume anything. what im saying is the folk that dont work and do get a house should be housed outside of area’s where its predominantly working people or businesses.

Specialun · 13-10-2018 02:57PM

Markcheese wrote: »

You do know that most of the residents of social housing are actual people.. You know, with families, school, college, jobs, lives ect..
That was what ballymun was

im referring to the folk that dont contribute to society

The privatisation of social housing

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