Housing in Ireland: A broken system.

If the government "builds" it still ends up contracting out to the same construction sector as purchasing its output directly.

And VHI is a terrible example as it effectively started out as a state backed monopoly which new starts really struggled to compete with due to customer inertia leading to market failure until VHI's undeserved subsidy from other companies was reduced to like-for-like.
 
Those FF governments didn't "build" housing after 2000 - they largely acquired it mainly via the Part V process. More building = more part V to subsume.
Middle class workers are not competing with asylum seekers living in hotels.
There is an argument that HAP creates rent floors in the rental market, but without it large numbers of tenants would be homeless and probably in many cases destitute also. You would need around 100-150k social homes just to remove current HAP from the PRS and that means effectively building a city almost the size of Cork, just for HAP. And that doesn't even take into account new needs, which are thousands every year.

In any case, there is a plan in tow to build giant Citywest hotel scale asylum hubs to house thousands in purpose built accommodation - but that will cost billions, and there will be every inch of the same level of hostile reactions to these as there currently is around 100 or so in a local hotel. I'm not going to suggest any answers to this as its well outside the scope of the topic, but most asylum seekers per se don't live in normal accommodation and don't "compete" as such with existing residents.
 
That's not true at all - Prof Michelle Norris wrote in a paper "Financing the Golden Age of Social Housing" that from almost the beginning of the state (and even before) state subsidised housing intended for rental was being sold to tenants or even purchasers upfront (first big example was Marino, see p8).
The state from almost the very beginning in the 1920s sold homes to tenants it had built at state expense. Council homes were sold LONG before the 1970s. But until 1966 there was a better level of discount due to offering the same levels of discounting to urban social tenants that had long been on offer to rural tenants - so by the 1970s there was a considerable body of social tenants who were in their homes long enough to get the value of the discount (which was 2% for every year of tenancy off the market price).

The reason given for selling off council homes was that the councils couldn't afford to service their own debt without some sales so were always incentivised to sell. And once rates were abolished, followed a decade later by the abolition of the local loan fund, central govt grants for social housing was the only pillar of the financing system left.
 
No, without HAP rents would be lower. The same number of people would be housed, though possibly now the same actual people. We'd have the same housing shortage and the same number of tenants. All HAP does it inflate rents and put private renters (those who pay their own rent) at a disadvantage.
 

New Irish houses are built to a much higher standard than in UK, making them more expensive

Irish houses and apartments are bigger, have higher specifications and are built to higher environmental standards than in Britain and Northern Ireland, making them more expensive.
m.independent.ie
An article in the independent today saying the same as I was saying above that irish building specifications are much higher than UK leading to increased cost and reduced output. Surely we have our priorities wrong we are using valuable resources in stuff that's not that important at end of the day. The UK still has excellent housing standards
 
Joe, while that may be true, we should not always key ourselves off the Brits. Does the article back that up with any reference information or is it a rant by the CIF ?

In a temperate, benign climate such as ireland where temps swing 0c to 20c maximum, houses should really take very little heating (and certainly less than 15,000kWh gas on thermal) on average, plus I have a 6kW stove used wood/coal to boost comfort level for cold weather. This house is B3 rated. So you are talking about c. 3k/annum for heating. Hence the air waves are full of fuel poverty cases and winter allowance requirements - simply because of historical shoddy housing, including the celtic tiger era and we are shovelling cash into the pockets of rich sheiks and putins of this world - I'd rather be spending this cash on a nice holiday..

If the whole housing industry,planning, land rezoning, legal you name it was more productive , and embraced 21st century ideas, you would find that superior houses could be produced, without crucifying the end customer. Dropping standards just means the builder and land owners pocket the cash. The fact that 3 bed houses in the cities requires salaries of >100k to sustain, is a joke and not reflected on the rolls royce building standards by any means - I have yet to hear of someone from abroad compliment the accomadation they live in - its the reverse actually.

This forum is stuffed with complaints about housing issues - someone recently posted about a NEW house with a 1,000,000 price tag - imagine the cash/salary/monthly repayment requirements - doesnt seem to insure you against sharp practice .
 
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The standards for apartments materially affect the number of apartments that can be built, and whether it is profitable to build them at all.
This has a direct impact on what gets built, and may mean more expensive townhouses say which accommodate less people.
Nobody is arguing for shoe boxes, but some of the standards seem unnecessary, and should not be part of standards but premium specs.
 
Interested to learn. Which standards are unnecessary? Minimum size? Or those related to energy efficiency? Or others?
 
lff12 said:
I think you've some good points here - but I wanted to jump in and explain the rationale for mixed tenureship (or part V in itself).
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I will start my reply with respect to the great lengths you went to in your response.

However it is arguable that rather than abolish directly building social housing and largely replacing it with part V, they could have changed how they accomplished it. Building 1200 homes in one estate immediately raises red flags. It is very unusual for privately developed estates to be built to this scale. Estates are usually split into smaller scale of 50-200 houses, even if they are right beside each other. This is to help create a sense of belonging to the local, smaller, community and to localise services for these estates eg shops, creches etc.

Obviously building one ginormous estate, likely with sparse facilities and then capping the income level of people there to mostly unemployed is going to turn out terribly. That doesn't mean the government should have stopped direct building. The could have split it into smaller local estates, supported by localised facilities. Then they could have allowed renters across a broader range of incomes to rent it, so by choice it would become a mixed income community. Essentially what they do in Vienna.

Instead they continued to cap the provision of social houses to mostly unemployed. (Although I will give them credit that the most recent income cap increases have greatly raised this.) Then sprinkled these people amongst private estates using part V. Great if the tenants are nice. But if you have the few same trouble makers who gave the old social housing states a bad name, now you've just spread the misery to John and Mary who are drowning in half a million euro of mortgage debt to live in the identical 2/3 bed house. If there are no provisions to effectively deal with this anti social behaviour, little is done. The police think it's a civil matter, unless serious assault or damage is involved. The council don't want to hear it as they have to house them somewhere, so evictions just cause them more problems. The trouble making tenants know it and realise they have nothing to lose. Worst case they go to prison for a few years (publicly funded) and then they have to be housed again when they come out.

Essentially anti social behaviour is blamed for the failings of the old council house estates. Yet little was actually done to deal with this. Instead part V helps spread it out, so statistically it looks a lot nicer, than having pockets of concentration. The actual people living in these anti social situations can just be ignored. I would bet it's not the majority of politicians living in the making of their own policies. If you were living in a situation similar to John and Mary above, it would be a lot easier to stomach if you knew you were also paying 10-15% of your income on the home. It's a lot less easier to stomach when they are forking out two grand in mortgage and fees and the trouble tenants are paying 10-15% of net income.

Another issue arising now is some councillors calling for a scheme similar to the tenant purchase scheme to be set up for part V houses. Allowing part V housing tenants to buy the homes at a substantial discount. Thankfully this is being opposed by some politicians. This would be another unjust policy and who knows if it makes it across the line one day. Essentially the government buying out private homes and giving it away at a discount, to the detriment of every mortgaged private purchaser in the estate, who gets no discount.
 
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odyssey06 said:
It's been a while since I looked in detail, dual aspect came up as a bugbear, as it had big implications for the layout of complexes and how many apartments could be fit in.
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what is dual aspect...i havent heard of that ?....is it relating to the whether the user is disabled or something ?
 
I didnt mention area....what is the min size of a single 1bed studio appmt. For example, I used to live in a 29.4m2 appmt 20yrs ago.

clearly like everything else in life SIZE MATTERS! - but there isnt any difficulty in a single person living in a 30m2 appmt -if its properly designed
 
PGF2016 said:
Interested to learn. Which standards are unnecessary? Minimum size? Or those related to energy efficiency? Or others?
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I think because the government has signed up to hugely ambitious emissions targets and because our public transport infrastructure is woeful with no metro on the cards until mid 2030s at earliest they have forced all the heavy lifting onto certain sectors and building energy targets are one such sector. In Ireland I think new builds and renovations need to reach A2 ber rating, this is almost the top rating. In UK I don't think there is an energy target except for rentals and these must reach rating E. However they have a very comprehensive public transport infrastructure with even small cities like Newcastle having a metro system therefore they don't need to force such onerous expensive targets onto buildings. All this is a political choice and our political overlords have decided on this path without thinking of the downstream consequences which are now acute housing shortages
 
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That's more of a rant that an answer to the question posed.
 
PGF2016 said:
That's more of a rant that an answer to the question posed.
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Excuse me, I gave a detailed response to your answer, I also posted an independent article from yesterday confirming my earlier post that building standards and energy ratings were considerably higher and more expensive than in UK.
You are the one that is using smart assed, dismissive one line responses to detailed posts .
 
All new builds in the UK have to at least C rated, with the majority built A or B. Without reading building regs it's hard to tell which rating corresponds to our rating. They go A, B, C, D etc. we go A1, A2, A3, B1, B2, B3 etc. However they have signed up to the same contractual carbon targets we have, and if they don't meet them they'll be hit with the same massive fines.
 
Re: I think because the government has signed up to hugely ambitious emissions targets and because our public transport infrastructure is woeful with no

Agreed, but lets remember, we irish are one of the most dependent economies in the world for fossil energy use. Again that was a choice which we have had a part to play since the 1970s - unfortunately there is little gas and no oil produced here.. and we didnt bother to invest in meaningful mass scale transport systems......

As part of EU, we are signed up like everyone of the 27, some of which are much much poorer - why should we be an exception? . Forget about the climate, its the money in your pocket is being wasted currently.

There are statistics available which shows that ireland had the lowest use of recycled ENERGY (not elec). 14%, lower than Malta (2nd last). Some of the nordics had 60% total. Its a bad record considering the advantages we have.
 
We didn't invest in Nuclear for stupid unscientific reasons, and that's the only green energy that will ever replace hydrocarbons, and we have a bad public transport system because of bad planning and ribbon development as much as anything else.
None of that is a reason for the housing affordability problem because it's an international problem, not just an Irish one. The actions of the Irish government didn't cause our housing affordability problem. Our government may have made it worse, or maybe not, but it didn't cause the problem.
 
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