Why Not Help Troubled Mortgage Owners If We Pay Out Millions On Rent Allowance?

A

Alwyn

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Why bailout people who have been unemployed for years, done umpteen FAS courses and basically scrounged off the state (might I add not all rent allowance recipients are) when we have noting in place for people who are working in low paid jobs but are facing mortgage difficulties?
 
While the scale of the involvement of the Irish state in the private rental market is nothing short of scandalous, two wrongs don't make a right.

Rent allowance should be reduced considerably from current levels, particularly given the parlous nature of the country’s finances. But then with so many TDs being landlords (even without Frank ‘Forty Gaffs’ Fahey) that is an unpopular viewpoint. The Irish political class is up to its armpits in property. The lack of a proper social housing policy, and the subsequent reliance on the private market, are shameful failures of this country. Someone on the propertypin told an anecdote recently about offering €1050 pcm rent for a 3 bed house and being rebuffed by the agent, who said they could get €1100 in rent allowance. As the poster put it, “people with jobs being outbid by people with no jobs”.

But there’s no point in adding to the list of failures by throwing money at people who can’t afford their mortgage repayments. I’m all for compassionate moratoria for a period of time, but I think struggling homeowners have been treated softly thus far. If you can afford the house, then start paying the mortgage. If you can’t pay the mortgage, you can’t have the house.

We don’t live in a magical fairyland where everyone can have the house they want and feel they deserve. This country won’t get back to anything resembling a functioning economy by postponing the hard decisions ad nauseum. Or by rewarding anything other than honest endeavour and hard work. The reward systems of welfare and the entitlement everyone feels to “help” has to end. I don’t say that as a mean-spirited conservative, I am a social democrat, but there has developed a feeling that if you don’t have Sky HD and a 50 inch Plasma then you are poverty stricken.

[FONT=&quot]There isn’t a magical pot of cash that can be doled out to anyone who wants it. The money that is being thrown into the blackhole of the banks, thrown at private landlords for poorly built bedsits, and that would be thrown at trying to postpone the inevitable has a huge social cost.[/FONT]
 
callybags said:
They can apply for mortgage interest supplement.
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You can not apply for mortgage interest supplement if your house is on the market to be sold. Alot of people have their house on the market beacuse they can not afford the payments.
 
So talk to your bank and explain the situation. Your house is on the market, it'll sell when it sells. Till then you get x amount per month and the balance in a couple of months when the deal goes through.
 
I know people who have worked all their life who have no option but to rent out their homes to RA recipients because they cannot afford to pay their mortgage any longer. It really is scandalous to say the least.
 
Boomtobust said:
I know people who have worked all their life who have no option but to rent out their homes to RA recipients because they cannot afford to pay their mortgage any longer. It really is scandalous to say the least.
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Can you give us an example of this? Where do they live themselves? The maximum RA amount is something like €900-€1,000 (and that's for a family in Dublin) so how much can they save by moving elsewhere? - particularly if they have landlord costs to pay if they rent out their house (higher insurance, possibly higher mortgage rates, PRTB registration, gaps in tenancies etc.) Is the situation due to unemployment?
 
I honestly feel help should be available for any family/individual that genuinely needs the helping hand but for a time limit, allowing the person full understanding that the help will eventually run out and so should plan/save for that moment.

I know a single woman who has three kids the eldest who has just left home as hes working and has lived in a council house all her life and has never had a job yet has the car, the hols and the clothes.
 


Boomtobust - What do you mean by this statement, surely people who have been unemployed for years don't have mortgages so they don't need to be bailed out.

By the way why have the unemployed been left on the scrapyard for years especially throughout the boom times ??? Is is because the government of the time choose to encourage the migration of thousands of eastern european workers to these shores while failing in their collective responsibilites to address the problems of the long term unemployed on our own shores.
 

They've moved in with family members and others have left the country because they can no longer make ends meet. With regard to the RA amount being between €900 to €1,000 that is correct but the RA tenant is adding their own money to this figure to meet the rental amount being asked for by the landlord.
 
Sandals said:
I know a single woman who has three kids the eldest who has just left home as hes working and has lived in a council house all her life and has never had a job yet has the car, the hols and the clothes.
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Maybe she won the lotto?
Maybe she inherited money from a rich aunt?
Maybe she works from home and hasn't told you about it?
Maybe she bought stock at the bottom of the dotcom boom and sold before the bust?
 
Howitzer said:
So talk to your bank and explain the situation. Your house is on the market, it'll sell when it sells. Till then you get x amount per month and the balance in a couple of months when the deal goes through.
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I have spoken to the bank and have another appointment this thursday, yes my house is on the market and when it sells it sells but has been on the market for 2 years now, can you explain what you mean by "Till then you get x amount per month and the balance in a couple of months when the deal goes through"
 

This type of thing makes me so cross. Why do you think it was wrong of other to come to work here in the boom times, when thousands of people are now leaving this country to work abroad. you cannot have your cake and eat it if all the "Eastern Europeans" left here and all the "Irish" came back then pretty sure the unemployment fiqures would be even higher. Lets remeber a lot of the migrate workers that came her in the good time took the jobs no one else wanted !
 

Precisely, if my figures are correct Ireland had well near 200,000 people unemployed during the good times and yet nothing was done to encourage them to go out to work despite there being full employment. Instead our government encouraged the Eastern Europeans to come and do the work instead. Something should have been done at that stage to get the long term unemployed back to work while the opportunities were there.

I am not having a go at the foreign workers, fair duce to them, they worked very hard in Ireland and for a previous very homogeneous society they are blessed with having enriched us with their culture and traditions.
 
So what if you do not fit into the "Family Income Supplement" and "Mortgage Interest Supplement" criteria, find yourself redundant after working for nearly two decades, didn't go for a 100% mortgage, paid a huge amount of stamp duty, lived off your redundancy for a year, didn't buy the plasma tv, the car, nor the 20sqm top floor apartment in Bulgaria, didn’t party (like the delights of Brian Lenihan would have you believe) and are presently entitled to the cost of 8 Quick Picks in the Lottery per week from the social welfare and now:

You watch those around you have worked little through their lives (and those included I know for a fact didn't win the lottery or inherit money from old granny baxter) are getting into their hand just over E1,000 per month from the HSE, working less than 30 hours a week and getting a nice wage to add to that and the comfortable life that goes with it (yes, the plasma tv, the playstation3, the car, etc).

and

Not one person (that I can recall) over the last few years has complained for a second their hard earned tax went into paying their rents (something I must say I was never entitled to the many many years I was renting before stepping onto the murky property ladder)?

What do you expect will happen these people made homeless with giant debt hanging around their necks? Why yes, they will attempt to apply for rent allowance courtesy of the hard working tax payer.

Everyone happy then? As everyone seems to be ok with the fact half a billion is spent on paying “other people’s rent”.
 
The Expert Group on Mortgage Arrears recommended changes to the MIS and these were accepted by the government. I am not sure if they have been implemented or not. See Page 11 of the Interim Report



So, if your house is for sale, but you meet the criteria otherwise, you should point this out if you are refused MIS.

I understand, that in practice, if you have a sub-prime loan, but would otherwise qualify for MIS, the lender will reduce the interest rates so that you get MIS.


MIS is a balance and proportionate response to helping around 18.500 people who can't pay their mortgage interest. Around 100,000 get Rent Supplement and around 150,000 get social housing.
 

This is not true. Those 200K long term unemployed didn't want to work and there is nothing that the government could do to change that mindset. Lots of Irish people who otherwise would not have been working got jobs during the boom. The Eastern Europeans were not encouraged by the government, they came for a better life to a place where they could work, in general they took jobs that Irish people were not willing to do. Even in the last couple of months there was a queue of people for basic jobs, in Aldi I think in Dublin and most of them were non nationals.
 
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