22 luxury apartments bought for €11m in Dublin 4 for social housing

KOW said:
The fact that they are willing to pay out approx 240k in rental payments over the next 10yrs and still not own the place.
They could buy it now for 300k.
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Still cheaper, and they won't have to maintain everything for 10 years. Without significant maintenance, it will be all but worthless in 10 years.
 
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T McGibney said:
Still cheaper, and they won't have to maintain everything for 10 years. Without dignigitmaintenance, it will be all but worthless in 10 years.
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Under the long term scheme the council do all maintenance on the property and it is returned to owner in condition handed over.
Just to add the apartment along with most apartments for sale could not be built for their sale prices.
 
KOW said:
The fact that they are willing to pay out approx 240k in rental payments over the next 10yrs and still not own the place.
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Likely a combination of budget and pressure I would have thought. For each 300k in their budget they can buy 1 or rent 12. Which gets their waiting list down more quickly? How many working there are really planning for 10 years time?
 
The value of a council house to a tenant has increased massively as property prices have increase while the max rent for the council house has stayed at a fixed percentage of income.

I believe a lot of government programs, council housing or HAP etc are just rearranging the population into an existing housing supply that doesn't fit the population. Instead of personnel economic means dictating who lives where and who is squeezed into emergency accommodation or in most cases living with parents its done by need / venerability.

So if the government provides support to 100 people in most need via council house or HAP, at least 50 people will fall out of the economic ability to rent. However they may not meet the need / vunrability requirement.

Those 100 who are house don't sit just above the economic barrier to housing that many would be hoping for (basic house, high percentage of income on housing and noting fancy about the area) but in a far better position than most recent house buyers (low rent, house may be to a very high standard and area could be one of the most desirable in the country). They move way ahead of most recent house buyers.

I can certainly understand the approach to a degree. But for someone trying to buy who will never qualify it must be frustrating. There is a percentage out there who will always be doing too well for council housing but not make the cut to buy.

As for the location, I believe there is an unwritten social contract the people broadly agree with, housing those most in need, yes, in the most desirable locations that are probable only affordable to less than 5%. I am not sure.
 
Leo said:
For each 300k in their budget they can buy 1 or rent 12.
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It’s also a healthy de-risking exercise by the state.

In ten or 20 years social housing demand might be for a different type of property or a different location.

People of all ages and family types have social housing needs.

The idea that the state should build monoculture semi-Ds for families is prehistoric.
 
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Leo said:
Agreed, it's been shown time and time again that the private sector can deliver them more cheaply.
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That's inaccurate. The public sector doesn't build homes in this country and hasn't built for a long time. The private sector builds for the public sector one way or another. At best some parts of the public sector have professional staff who can form part of the design team, but it's far more usual that they write a specification which is used to tender for the design team.

It's been shown time and time again that the private sector extracts far higher prices from public sector contracts than from the equivalent private sector contracts. That's true of both housing and office- there's no way for example any contractor would have dared charge €440k for a glorified mobile home like they did for the OPW, because they'd never get another job again.

The real problem is that virtually none of the people "responsible" (quotation marks because it's blindingly obvious nobody is actually held responsible) for public works could manage the construction of an ikea wardrobe at a reasonable cost, never mind a residential or office development.

On the question of luxury apartments in D4 for social housing, I'm totally fine with that. (FWIW neither i nor any family member I'm aware of has ever benefited from social housing). Social housing benefits more it costs, and there's behavioral trends which suggests putting poor people in wealthy areas is probably the best use of social housing because the poor kids will have peers who expect to go to college, pay tax etc and people tend to conform. Ultimately the money comes back several times over to the taxpayer, it just takes a while. A residential property is a 100 year asset.

I also don't agree that there's any moral hazard to providing secure social housing. I think the maximum contribution is 16% of income, so you'll have to earn €75k a year to pay €12k annual rent in Dublin which would be an absolute bargain. It reduces the incentives attached to higher wages but that's true of every tax. You need to be truly bad at maths to think there's no financial benefit to earning €60k instead of €50k etc.

Selling social housing to tenants on the other hand is just stupid.
 

You get all these in any middle class area in Ireland.

The biggest differences I see between public and private projects is the private sector being in a position to cancel / stop a project when it doesn't make financial scene. I have done lots of cost estimates or prelim design for private sector projects that never advance because it didn't make financial sense to the developer. On a public project there is often a political commitment to a project early on and the object of the project is not financial gain.

The second is the number of parties the developer will try and keep happy is usually limited to those he is legally required to. Depending on the nature of the public project that list could be long. eg. the mix of unit types in a housing development will be based on the most profitable the developer can get planning for for private vs the public housing development taking the housing waiting list as a driver.
 
faketales said:
is the private sector being in a position to cancel / stop a project when it doesn't make financial scene.
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A big problem is the early leaking or announcement of public sector projects.

Makes it very hard for officials and politicians to pull out.
 
Fundamental reason, as per the Childrens Hospital fiasco, is that the Public Sector is, in general, incapable of writing a clear, decisive and comprehensive set of requirements for anything as anyone who has ever had to respond to such a tender will be aware of. Some of them (and not just in the construction sector) are so awful it beggars disbelief. I've seen one recently where the clarification question document was longer then the tender document itself.

There is also now an insistance on everything being "fixed price" in a very rigid manner. Hence anyone who submits a price for a Public Sector contract is adding a significant risk factor onto everything, and by significant, I mean 30%+ as a minimum,
 
Not all specs are bad in fairness, but most are.

There's two kinds of bad though. First is poor quality like you describe. Second is the "perfect" specification. As nothing is perfect this often results in zero compliant tenders for goods (the spec is so detailed that nothing meets all the requirements) and a fortune in change orders for works because the incredibly detailed spec is riddled with small errors- every single one of which is a change order and more cash. The example i was given 5 years ago by a guy working on the Childrens Hospital was that it cost the taxpayer €300 if the location of a light switch on the plans was changed....

There's no such thing in real life as a fixed price public works contract. Out of hundreds i only ever saw one single one that actually came in at the contract price. One.

For goods and service any competent contracting authority (of which there are regrettably few) will include a price variation clause linked to inflation (and there are plenty of indices from which to choose an appropriate one). But yeah, if you're signing a multi-year contract with no price variation clause clause you'd mad not to load it.

Must be said there's a number of public sector contracts which deliver real value for the taxpayer.

On the subject of cancelling contracts if the price is too high, that's not a viable option for a badly needed school, hospital, rail line etc. As a taxpayer I'm apalled at the cost of children's hospital, as a parent i don't give a damn as long as it gets built. Bike sheds on the other hand...
 
SquirrelChaser said:
That's inaccurate. The public sector doesn't build homes in this country and hasn't built for a long time.
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You'll note I didn't claim that they built themselves. That particular practice was eliminated long ago due to the private sector of the time being able to build for less.
 
SquirrelChaser said:
As a taxpayer I'm apalled at the cost of children's hospital
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I'm not. I don't care. It's an immensely complex one-off project. I'm appalled at the waste and mismanagement within the HSE and at all levels and categories of employment within the HSE.
I'm appalled that the State adds so much time and cost to the provision of housing by the Private Sector.
I'm appalled that the State buys existing private houses to use as social housing.

I don't agree at all that there is a societal requirement to house the most needy. If they can meet their own needs then they should get nothing. No house, no welfare, no clothing, no shelter. Nothing. I would literally let them starve. Those who are unable to meet their own needs should be helped. In their case there is a societal obligation.
 
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