Modular Housing Cancelled.

RadiationKing wrote: »

And again, what happens to the children when they do? The children aren't the ones making the decisions here but they have to live with the consequences.

You probably think I'm just making an emotive argument but I'm trying to draw attention to the fact that this issue really isn't as simple as foggy's making it out to be.

If the child's parents are deliberately leaving their children homeless, using them as pawns in a game of cat/mouse with the council then that is absolute neglect and social services need to step in.

If you want to solve the housing crisis you have to look at the causes:

1) Lack of supply.
2) Lack of finance (that's unlikely to change either due to the fiscal position and ECB rules - we can't just magic money out of nowhere and loosen mortgage rules).

So, you have to tackle 1).

We could go back to one of our oldest models of social/affordable housing which worked pretty successfully in the late 19th century. Dublin Artisans' Dwellings Co.

You create a company, get people to invest in that company and build houses for a modest but attractive return (in that case about 4 to 6%) which is better than you'd get putting money on deposit somewhere.
Anyone from individual investors, residents in the houses or large managed funds (banks etc) and even the state could invest.

The houses are then leased out on a long term basis to residents and are treated as if they're their owned homes i.e. very strong tenure, unfurnished house which you decorate yourself, maintenance is largely your responsibility etc etc.

It would create lots of affordable homes in cities and towns that people could access without needing good credit history and without needing mortgages.

This is basically what happens to a large degree in Germany and plenty of other countries and its something we've done before.

Relying on small time developers and speculators to buy houses at market rates and then let them to people will absolutely not solve the problem. However, as the buy-to-let landlord is a major constituent of FF and FG, I can't see any vision or change happening anytime soon.

There are alternative models out there, and we have used them in the past. It's just that for some reason our political establishment and a good chunk of the population too is stuck in the mortgage + developer model and will not see past it and will kick up stink if anyone builds social housing anywhere near them.

Also, if you think about it - the current model only benefits speculators and ultimately they are very wealthy speculators such as managed funds and multibillionaires who own the banks who lend to our banks.

You rent from a landlord, paying over the odds for a crappy housing unit, they pay over the odds to buy it, they pay a mortgage, the bank they borrow the money from is paying over the odds to borrow money to lend to them etc etc.. It's a one way flow of money out of the economy.

For the most part, other than on new build where there are wages to be earned in construction, it isn't money circulating around the economy it's being hoovered straight out and off to London or Frankfurt or Wall Street.

Reduce the cost of housing and you improve people's lives across the board. Yeah, you'll anger some FF/FG voters who see their paper wealth decrease a bit, but there'll be more money in circulation in the economy, more jobs, happier people, better lives.

This isn't communism, or even socialism - it's just a different way of looking at funding housing in a capitalist market.

The one thing we cannot do is allow a situation to continue where a huge % of the population can't access basic housing. That is a total failure of the state to function!

BattleCorp wrote: »

I told this story in another thread. A single guy I know well was homeless. He was offered a one bedroom apartment in the town where I live. He turned it down. He was then offered a two bedroom apartment in the same town. He turned that down too. He said he would only move into a house. And what happened, they gave him a three bedroom house. All for himself. Isn't that nice. :mad: :mad:

This sh1t has to stop.

I call BS on this.

Superhorse wrote: »

There are no free houses. Everyone pays a percentage of any income they have.

And if they are in receipt of rent supplement and social welfare?

maudgonner wrote: »

I'd add:
3) Too much demand.

As FishOnABike mentioned earlier, there's been an absolute abandonment of any spatial strategy since the economic crash. Not everyone wants to live in Dublin, but for many its the only logical choice if they want to have a well-paying career. But it's illogical to keep pushing development into a city that already has serious capacity issues. We need Cork, Limerick, Galway etc to be on a much more level playing field with Dublin. That means taking a serious look at why industry chooses to locate in Dublin and making it viable & attractive for some of them to locate elsewhere.

You also have to be logical about the spacial strategy too.

A lot of companies want to locate in a city with facilities and graduates. A lot of our planning tends to be to try and put Google in a tiny village in the Arran Islands and then wonder why it won't go there.

It's also extremely difficult to get overseas recruits to locate in small towns / villages. Dublin, Cork and maybe Galway and Limerick is about as small as it goes. When you start getting down to regional towns, people don't want to move there and recruitment becomes difficult.

Growing Cork, Limerick Galway and Waterford makes a lot of sense.

The problem here is that you'll immediately get a notion that Cork is equated to a small village in the most rural part of Roscommon politically speaking and nothing happens. So, you end up with the "Dublin" vs "down the country" divide.

The cities other than Dublin get stifled and Dublin grinds to a halt due as its infrastructure isn't good enough.