Irish Property Market chat II - *read mod note post #1 before posting*

If soneone is working for Google as an engineer for example, they wont qualify for social housing.

Private rents and costs are a factor, but that is it.

Agreed. And so Google staff costs arent affected by the cost of social housing in the locality.

Of course they are.

Did you not know for example, that if you are one of your Google engineers in Dublin and they move you and your role to New York, that you will be paid a lot more? Have you ever lived outside of Ireland? Lots of places are much cheaper to live, and lots are much more expensive. The salaries paid will reflect that.

And would the engineer qualify for social housing in the US, when they moved to Manhattan on their higher salary?

We arent talking about the private market here, we are talking about the cost of social housing.

I agree.

I think the confusion here is that I was responding to a poster who said private employers should pay their staff more, so that the state doesnt need to subsidise social housing in the area that the employer is located.

My example of Google is that firstly, Google staff (broadly) dont qualify for social housing, so the cost of it is irrelevant to their staff.

Secondly, if Google were to pay their staff a higher salary as the poster suggested, the cost of social housing in Ringsend/Irishtown and Grand Canal Dock would actually increase, not decrease, as DCC would now be competing with higher paid private employees for limited housing stock, primarily delivered by private landlords.

Google is a massive red herring here - social housing is for lower incomes, and the employers who get subsidies indirectly are those employing people on lower wages. Think shops, cafes, bars, restaurants and factories.

Social housing and HAP mean these low paid employees can afford to live and work in these areas, and the employers no longer need to be competitive on pay. Its a subsidy for bad employers

If the employees are fairly compensated they do not need social housing in the first place, and the state no longer need to provide social housing for them. Which is expected in the most affluent areas of the city really

A two hour commute each way is not the end of the world

A 4hr commute daily is nightmarish. Presuming that you instead meant a 2hr commute total (1hr each way), that's still on the high side.

But the original point being argued was that if we got rid of HAP in desirable areas, that instead of rents dropping due to no more state subsidies, rent would remain as so many people want to rent in these places (e.g. Blackrock as poster mentioned), and then those working low income jobs in that area would lose out. In reality, the employer loses out as they can no longer offer poor wages - either wages increase to make up the increased housing costs or they go out of business. That's just like, the free market man

I don't think there is a need to get builders from other countries.

In any community groups I am in, any single small job people request done, they get swamped by responses from tradesmen. I am talking even really small jobs. Tradesmen are competing for any jobs now. No shortage. Plasterers, painters, plumbers etc don't seem to be very busy. Similarly I see carpenters looking for work.

Well you must be living somewhere completely different to me any time I need any tradesmen there always seems to be a delay as they are out the door busy.

1hr each way though common, it is not "a bit of travel to work".

2hrs of your day 5 days a week is a significant amount of time. You would want to be getting paid more to justify the commute

We mean govt subsidies, not subsidies from the employer themselves.

An 18 month old IDA client assesment of Ireland. An interesting template for a government with Ireland's best interests as a priority where they might get ideas for competiveness improvement.

Time for government to at least stop being a major part of the problem in planning, hosing availability and affordability

https://x.com/GTCost/status/1874912505572839482?t=DuAsqNrBlfDYcmQUBHMM-Q&s=19

Incentives could also be used to re-route some construction capacity from office and other commercial projects to housing, if the government were so inclined. And the same for re-routing capacity from home improvement construction work to house building.

And the planning (and particularly objections) process could and should be streamlined ASAP.

That combined could probably increase housing numbers by 25-35% or so anyway, and get us up to about 50k per year very quickly.

But beyond that yeah, reducing demand by reducing our out of control rapid population growth is the only (comparatively) easy solution that could be done that would have a near instant, and significant, impact on the housing crisis. While also not costing a cent (actually saving billions of tax payer euros..), as a bonus.

How would you address immigration though? What policies would we bring in to give us a balanced immigration level?