The Housing Crisis - What actions would you take to improve things?

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BigBoots82

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Eoghan Murphy's recent book Running from Office was a reminder to me that this crisis has been with us for a long time already and things have progressively gotten worse as time has gone on. Thus the question what actions would you take to improve things

I'd like to see:
1. No rent controls or at worse rent controls indexed for inflation.
2. Ensure land activation measures apply to all. No carve outs for farmers.
3. Significant clamp down on nimbyism.
4. Do everything possible to speed up / reduce the risks associated with obtaining planning
5. Prioritise early investment in infrastructure. It's far too late to be seeking to address at the time planning is sought.
6. Incentivise investment by the public in the development of more social housing rather than having billions sitting on deposit.
7. Tax incentives for apartment developments.
 
I'd remove secondary tenancies from RPZs - the original tenant moves out, the landlord can start again with whatever the appropriate rent is.
Agree RE farmers but easier way to do this is to make it conditional that the council can de-zone the land outside of the draft development plan cycle so the land is no longer liable.
NIMBYism can be dealt with:
  • make it a criminal offence for an elected representative to organise or be the name actor on a judicial review involving challenging a planning decision or appeal. The reason councillors & candidates orchestrate objection campaigns is to pander to their communities instead of doing real work in the community. (They also then use the contacts made to fund raise for their own [re]election campaigns, which is why JRs dropped off significantly last year). Shut that down.
  • Weighting each submission so that submissions from unaffected parties are given very low weight while parties who have demonstrable stakes (eg encroachment on their land or immediate proximity to the property) are given the highest weight (instead of expecting planners to make their own judgment on this).
  • Require full ownership of any PP to be publicly available on each proposal so there is no room for speculative conspiracy theories about the identity of the owner of the land, the PP applicant or speculative planned use, to avoid giving oxygen to orchestrated campaign
Improving quality of PPs, refuse all PPs that include proposals on land with outstanding Land Registry queries on ownership
Improving quality of PPs, stop registering "invalid" applications - so these applications are sent back rather than being publicly recorded
Increase threshold of evidence to raise judicial reviews and permit them to be opened only by those with a demonstrable stake in the PP

When land is zoned residential or mixed use make it incumbent on the council to consult with Irish water, Eirgrid, eir, SIRO etc about provisioning infrastructure on such land in future so at least there is a plan
Create a state savings bond exclusively to invest in social and affordable homes
Create a state investment vehicle to invest in domestic residential owner occupier mortgages
Incentivise fund providers to match this with similar funds (here's an example)
Agree re the incentives for apartment development but these need to encourage more owner occupiers to create a more balanced sector (apartments are currently 3/4 owned by landlords big and small)
 
lff12 said:
I'd remove secondary tenancies from RPZs - the original tenant moves out, the landlord can start again with whatever the appropriate rent is.
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I would just abolish RPZs.

But if you are going to control rents for existing tenants but not for new tenants, then landlords will do everything possible to get rid of existing tenants who are paying under the market rate.

There are no simple solutions.
 
Exactly treat everyone fairly or expect a reaction from those unfairly treated. For the record I have two properties with HAP and RAS and I under market rent by over €1k per month per property.
 
1. For five years, cut CGT and Income Tax on residential land development profits to 20%, with no PRSI nor USC on the latter.
2. Roll back building regulations and minimum standards to those pertaining in the year 2000.
3. Offer an attractive annual Income Tax Credit to anyone completing an approved building trade apprenticeship programme between now and 2030, conditional on them continuing to work in that trade as their main occupation.
 
Brendan Burgess said:
then landlords will do everything possible to get rid of existing tenants who are paying under the market rate.
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This is not completely untrue but probably very uncommon.

AAM has many stories from landlords who say things like “I was happy to have a 50% market rate tenancy because of fairness/good tenant but now that they are voluntarily leaving I want to rest to market rates.”

It’s in legal and practical terms very difficult for a landlord to get a tenant to leave who doesn’t want to. This is why the institutional landlords are on a building strike. They know that they will never be able to legally terminate tenancies which are below market rents.
 
I would start by insisting that the Government quantify the unmet housing need accurately.

I looked into the social housing situation in 2023.

Besides the local authorities, there are 520 + approved housing bodies.

I first contacted The Joint Committee on Housing Local Government and Heritage.

Its response to my enquiry was that I should contact the Housing Agency regarding numbers on housing waiting lists as the Committee did not have any information on numbers.

I then contacted The Housing Agency in regard to the figures of housing need in its data hub. I noted that it provided statistics from local authorities only and not the AHBs.

I asked whether it maintained a master database of everyone who needed housing and in regard to local authorities, whether unique identifiers were used to eliminate duplications in the case of the same applicant to LAs and/or AHBs.

Its reply was that it had no such database.

And so, when housing is being discussed, what statistics is the Dáil using?

What is the breakdown of required house/apartment size and facilities?
 
Force councils to increase (double) the amount of zoned lands.
Force councils to relax rules of planning on non residential zoned land. Except where there is a risk of flooding.
Ban the councils Local Interest/From the area policy rules.
 
BigBoots82 said:
I'd like to see:
1. No rent controls or at worse rent controls indexed for inflation.
Click to expand...
Price controls in general get a bad rap.
In times of increasing demand landlords will naturally try to increase rents as much as possible, beyond
any increased costs they might be experiencing.
 
The local authorities produce two separate lists:
  1. those in unsuitable housing/homeless and on the housing list waiting for housing
  2. those looking for a transfer
The latter includes several different scenarios
  1. Medical welfare cases - typically people with illness or disabilities who need a [different] adapted property to suit their needs
  2. existing council tenants seeking a change to a bigger property due to family size increasing
  3. council tenants looking to move for reasons other than family size
  4. HAP or AHB tenants who want to move to a council rental
AFAIK from time to time efforts are made to "clean" the data so they don't include people who have died, left the country, gone to prison, won the lottery, changed family circumstances, whatever reason that would mean they no longer qualify. Another issue is people moving from one area to another with genuine reason (eg HAP tenant having to move area after an eviction to sell). But there is probably usually some people on the list who qualify on account of personal circumstances but would not have an urgent housing need (aka the HAP tenants in a stable tenancy looking to move or an applicant in their 20s with no dependents who is not currently homeless).
There is no separate applicant list for AHBs. Access to social homes via AHBs is usually via the council's list in which case they are nominated to the AHB for interview and placement.
This is the current Dublin city council policy

Overall estimates of general housing needs is not scientific. The current media/political narrative is that any adult over 21 living in the family home is there unwillingly due to the housing crisis and not other factors such as education status, personal preference, relationship breakups, illness, unemployment, low income, caring duties or just personal preference. I know at least one single guy in his 40s who lives in his parents attic because he really wants to inherit the family home (they've enough wealth to pass on the equivalent to all other siblings in that case) & by keeping it as his sole residence he won't have to pay inheritance tax (the value of the property would be well over the threshold). The current use of data by the media just assumes that every adult in their 20s and 30s who lives at home does so because rents and house prices are high, and not the other reasons stated above. I'm old enough to remember that in my mid 20s it was considered rather odd, and even a bit anti-social to move into a flat in Dublin if your parents were still alive and in the family home. People used to say that such young people should be helping out the family through giving up part of their incomes rather than paying rent to strangers.

Migrants who move here to work or study, or study and then work, normally would not be found on such lists because of the ordinary residency requirements. If they stay here long enough and become citizens certainly they will start to show up on housing lists, as will former asylum seekers granted leave to remain (in practice most of these will end up on HAP for a very long time). If they do qualify they will be treated the same as anybody else on the housing list in accordance with Housing circular 41/2012. They would not get any priority and would join the very long queue.

The recent ESRI study was wildly different to the census in terms of the percentage living at home in their 20s because it is based solely on "growing up in Ireland" research subjects who were born in the country in 1998 and specifically excludes anybody who moved here after that. That's why is showed a far higher number living in the family home - by their nature, migrants in their 20s overwhelmingly arrive here of their own accord and few would be living with older family members unless they too have migrated to here.
 
T McGibney said:
1. For five years, cut CGT and Income Tax on residential land development profits to 20%, with no PRSI nor USC on the latter.
Click to expand...
I’d also remove usc from rental income and reintroduce indexing for all cgt calculations.
T McGibney said:
2. Roll back building regulations and minimum standards to those pertaining in the year 2000.
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While there is certainly scope for reducing standards, particularly in over the shop type redevelopment, I wouldn’t go back to the 2000 standards.
T McGibney said:
3. Offer an attractive annual Income Tax Credit to anyone completing an approved building trade apprenticeship programme between now and 2030, conditional on them continuing to work in that trade as their main occupation.
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Definitely. I’d give it for anyone holding a senior trade certificate for a construction trade who is working full time in the sector. There are loads of men (and it is men, not women) who have the skills and experience to work in the sector but don’t because it’s hard and often dangerous work requiring long hours, travel and difficult working conditions.

Training apprentices is expensive. I’d also subsidise their wages during their training by giving a grant to the employer.
 
BigBoots82 said:
Eoghan Murphy's recent book Running from Office was a reminder to me that this crisis has been with us for a long time already and things have progressively gotten worse as time has gone on
Click to expand...
I still don’t accept that it’s a crisis. It’s a big problem but catastrophising things makes it more likely that we get emotional responses rather than rational ones based on evidence and data. In my opinion that’s what’s happened so far, ensuring that the problem gets worse.
 
The first time I noticed an incipient crisis was on a day out in Dublin on the day that Osama bin Laden was killed. That was almost 14 years ago.

It's been a full blown crisis for almost as long.

The crisis has persisted and gotten worse because in the meantime no political or civil service policymaker has only admitted let alone confronted the ugly reality that it was their decisions after the 2008 crash that caused it.

Until they roll back those decisions, any amelioration will be extremely difficult to achieve.
 
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