Conor Skehan "The homeless industry makes me so angry"

T McGibney said:
Yet from 1997 onwards throughout all or most of the last boom, the prices of new builds typically lagged those of comparable secondhand properties.
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The price in 1997 and up until the crash was mainly driven by the demand by, and purchasing power of, private buyers. The property market is completely different now with international capital flooding into the market both here and internationally. That's what's driven price increases here. The same money is driving prices internationally. That's what's driven material cost inflation.
 
Hard cases make bad laws. They make worse policies.
 
So Public Housing is a good thing but the need for social housing is a symptom of a dysfunctional market. The solution is to fix the market so that it is not needed. Therefore social housing is a bad thing.
 
No, it was huge inflows of international capital in the form of borrowed money that financed and sustained for so long the post-1997 boom in construction.
Purple said:
That's what's driven material cost inflation.
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Again, no. The most serious inflation in material costs has been since the stupid Covid lockdowns messed up domestic and global supply chains. QE was going on for long long before that.
 
T McGibney said:
No, it was huge inflows of international capital in the form of borrowed money that financed and sustained for so long the post-1997 boom in construction.
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Not nearly as much. The international capital funded the banks during the boom. Now it's buying the property.
T McGibney said:
Again, no. The most serious inflation in material costs has been since the stupid Covid lockdowns messed up domestic and global supply chains. QE was going on for long long before that.
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Yes, the stupid Covid lockdowns reduced the supply side of the raw materials market but the prices are still being driven to a large extent by speculative investment in the commodities market. I agree that closing the global economy for the best part of two years has been a disaster, something that was obvious from the start.
 
Are there figures available for the total annual amount paid by the state to NGO’s and other charities working with the homeless?
 
As well as the central Govt Department, there is the following:

Housing Finance Agency
Housing Agency
Land Development Agency

and today I discovered a new one:

Approved Housing Bodies Regulatory Authority (AHBRA)

Approved Housing Bodies Regulatory Authority - Approved Housing Bodies Regulatory Authority

We are an independent authority, established in February 2021. Our organisation is tasked with providing the regulation of Approved Housing Bodies (AHBs) for the purposes of protecting housing assets provided or managed by such bodies.
www.ahbregulator.ie
 

T McGibney said:
The term is widely used and connotes the large number of people making a living from dealing with and purportedly trying to fix the homelessness crisis, and who would be out of work if they succeeded in that.
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RonnieShinbal88 said:
I didn't read the article but from quotes interpreted the industry as the people highlighting it, threshold etc. and possibly even some politicians
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Ok, I still think it muddies the waters because it implies the homeless themselves are complicit.
Note, I am talking about the term itself and not what it seems the author actually meant, as clarified by the comments here.

To explain further:
1. the term 'homeless' refers to people who are homeless
2. homelessNESS describes the phenomenon

'homelessness industry' would be clearer (though adds that extra syllable).

Calling it the 'homeless industry' would be like calling the medical industry the patients industry (or the doctors industry? Either way it's not equivalent)
 
It seems the term 'homeless' itself has been redefined a bit over the years?

I was surprised reading the article when the author referred to people with supportive family to help them over a rough patch as being homeless.

Homeless used to mean someone who was out of options altogether.

(Not saying whether this is right or wrong btw, just an observation).
 
Purple said:
I'm not but there is an industry built up around homelessness and it wastes vast amounts of money.
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Do you want to elaborate on what that industry is? What is being bought and sold?

As mentioned, I'm aware of the "homelessness porn" as @Shirazman called it, and I agree with that take on it.

Beyond that, what is there?
 
Just reading that, my view on that whole situation is that only genuine charities run by people with vocations should be doing charity. Charities were traditionally supported by voluntary donations.
The job of the state should be to prevent homelessness as much as possible.
If a person becomes homeless because the state failed them, the state should not then get involved at that point (unless it's to offer accommodation).

As to the organisations themselves, I don't know enough to comment. (I met one person who worked with a homeless charity in Dublin a few years ago and got to know them a little bit. A wonderful person).
 
valery said:
Are there figures available for the total annual amount paid by the state to NGO’s and other charities working with the homeless?
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This report summarises trends in spending on services for homeless people https://www.focusireland.ie/wp-cont...s_On_Homelessness-Public-Expenditure-0620.pdf

One area issue which is not widely understood is that almost all services for homeless people are 100% funded by government. This includes the services provided by all the large homelessness charities. Thus the fundraising they engage in isn't actually needed to provide their core services - it is used to fund add on services which night be beneficial for homeless people (eg. additional supports for homeless children) or might not (eg. their 'research and advocacy' services). Also fund raising costs such as advertising can account a significant % of the funds raised by donations. I personally object to this because it isn't widely understood by the people who donate money to these organisations.

I also don't like how their advertising campaigns use rather stigmatising and stereotyping pictures of homeless people - typically of older men with alcohol sleeping rough - whereas in reality this accounts for a tiny % of homeless people.

By the way when a service isn't government funded this is sometimes (but not in 100% of cases certainly) a bad sign, in my experience in terms of the actual need for the service they provide or the quality of its management.
 
wondering said:
If a person becomes homeless because the state failed them
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See that's a crazy notion. It's not the responsibility of the State to prevent homelessness. Most people end up homeless due to abuse, trauma and addiction. Unless the State is going to put cameras in every room in every home in the country then they can't prevent that.
The State should put what resources it can into addiction and mental health services, though the criminalisation of addiction is a much broader issue, but it certainly can't be held responsible for every trauma and every horrible thing that happens to private citizens.
 
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