Housing Crisis - Your Take

mcwilliams is right in many ways, the only way out of this is public borrowing, but to make sure this money is used in actual building, not using it to push up prices further, rates are at record lows, central banks are currently stuck in a low rate environment, with little abilities to raise rates, so crack on with the borrowing....

we will also need private sector developers/builders on board, as we ll need them to actually do the building, as the state no longer has the abilities to build, but strict conditions would need to be agreed, such as no excess profits, they clearly need to profit from building, but.....

protective measures will need to be implemented, in order to protect these developers from unpredictable outcomes such as inflation, they must be protected from going bust....

it makes sense to collectively accumulate resources including finances, to secure materials supplies, its mutually beneficial that building is done, and as many businesses survive doing so....

oh and mcwilliams is dead right on our whole approach to building, ours is diabolical, we should be doing what other countries do in regards training, create proper respected training faculties and pay participants appropriately

....will any of this be done, probably not.....

the whole public housing system has been undermined for decades now to the point it no longer is capable of doing its job, this may never change...

the issues of our training and educational system are far more complicated than the opinions of some mammy and daddys, the whole system is academically biased!

Public sector implements govt policy. The tail does not wag the dog.

There is what they say and what they actually do.

again, theres nothing basic about the so called laws of economics, yes we have been suffering from a serious supply problem, but this was brought to our attention during the previous crash, but our political and state bodies have been severally disempowered to do anything about this, at nearly all stages, including financially. theres very little free money as such in circulation, all money begins its life as debt, only we have confined debt forgiveness towards more wealthier entities in society, large corporations etc, and enforced debt repayments else where, in particular in the public domain.....

All they have to do is unsubscribe from the WEF reset plan. That would be the start we would need.

If a property is not viable to sell or rent. A charge will do nothing to fix whatever is causing that.

This problem started with social and affordable housing then spread to the rest of the market from there.

Its someone or institutions with deep pockets keeping properties vacant and its mainly at the top end of the market. If you free up these apartments, they aren't affordable for anyone to buy anyway. The vacant stuff at the low end is often already in local authority ownership. They are unlikely to fine themselves for that.

they ll try to change things, but they ll struggle, and may only be able to change little during their term, these issues will absolutely not be resolved in a single term, and they may only get a single term, so........

Sinn Fein are in a funny old predicament.

If they get into government they are ruined.

They cannot fix anything, especially they way they have said they will go about it.

In fact if they follow their own stated strategy they will cause untold damage to an already fragile system.

They obviously know this but cannot publicly state it. So now they are sitting in their offices, sucking off the government tit and wondering how on earth are they going get out of actually having to govern after the next election.

So with the other parties being so bad. They got out of it the last time by pretending they made a mistake with their vote management. They cant pull that one again.

They are a party that will thrive in opposition, but hand them the reigns and we are all fcuked - including them.

Government in Ireland is actually a hot potato right now. I dont think anyone wants it really.

I propose the solution that you build a huge estate (lets call it happyville) as cheap as you can somewhere far away from the services that the normal law abiding population need more. Then that new estate is where anyone who gets evicted form a home anywhere else in the country gets housed. They dont get offered a choice of anywhere else that they have been housed.

Also a register of anti-social people who have been evicted so no other landlord makes the mistake of renting to them again.

so if if falls on the council to house you because noone else will touch you, you get housed in happyville.

Let them have neighbors like themselves and see how they like it.

The party that backed ‘birthright citizenship’. .? No….The opposite is the case if Sinn Fein get in… the housing and social crises in this country will be multiplied beyond comprehensive ability but it would get them votes which is their modus operandi…

The capital markets are awash with cash with nowhere to go. Any developer needing money to build xx homes with some expected rate of return (relatively low for the finance side) can get this money easily. Same with governments, they can pretty much raise as much money as needed on the bond markets. It's not about money, the issue is entirely related to everything else I noted.

I think we should ease the A1/A2 BER requirement which (I believe) is still in place for new builds. Properties with B1 ratings are demonstrably fine. But in saying that, I would only open that door to builders who have achieved a certain number of A1/A2 houses already. Say if a builder comes along with a plan for 100 houses, 50 of them can be B1 houses so long as the other 50 are A1/A2 rating. They can bring one B1 or B2 property to the market for every one A2 property they've brought to the market.

I love the idea of A2 properties but we need to fix this supply issue, and reaching those standards is very difficult for builders, particularly with the global supply chain issues we're seeing at the moment.

I am talking about proper developers who can build at scale. Example Cairn homes who raise their money to develop from the public markets on the Irish stock exchange. Glenveagh is another one doing something similar.

Mom and pop developers are only a band-aid and we need I believe somewhere around 50,000 homes a year so billions of euros are needed to finance this and this is available on worldwide capital markets (quite easily I will add).

What does DMcW mean by borrow from "Europe"?

Does he mean the ECB? Impossible, as the ECB don't lend to states.

Does he mean the EU, as in the Commission? Until recently, the EU does not lend to states.

There is a new COVID fund, though, which involved the Commission borrowing, and making grants to states.

Housing needs a twin strategy. Solve the current homeless/high rent issues and get new development underway to cater for the accummulating accommodation requirements.

By far the simplest thing to do is make better use of existing buildings to reduce outlay on hotels for the homeless and reduce rents generally.

There are numerous other requirement :-An apprenticeship scheme.

A properly structured construction industry with finance and standards.

A properly integrated planning system with pre-planning meetings, realistic applications quick turnaround of applications and appeals including judicial review.

Dealing with trading in planning as opposed to building.

It is a massive set of interlocking challenges and problems and so far there has just been cherry-picking of solutions with short term measures which are ineffective or cause worse problems than those they are intended to solve.

We can borrow to our hearts content, money has never been cheaper. The will is just not there, too many vested interests. Thats not exclusive to Ireland either, most capitalist nations have left their housing development to the private sector.

We haven't really got a housing crisis. Wait until 200,000 refugees need to be housed in the next year, that'll be a proper housing crisis.

Posters might no aware the barriers to construction are increasing all the time. From 2024 we have a statutory register of builders which all we will to join. In a couple of years later, BER certs will be downgraded and houses being built as we speak will have to be retrofit.