Housing Policy Failure
December 10, 2022
- Its impossible to state how incompetent and delusional current government policy on housing is. Rents are soaring and forecast to continue to do so. Planning permissions are down nearly 50% on last year. Around us are housing developments that have been abandoned for over a year soaring costs apparently leading to companies going into liquidation.
No reality check is provided by the media on government figures most you can do is listen to trotted out nonsense full of lies and disinformation by any government spokesperson provided with 5 soundbites to broadcast in any media interview. Micheal Martin has a smile for every camera pointed at him as the Titanic goes down.
No rigorous, performance analysis, fact gathering is allowed into a world populated only by propaganda getting more absurd by the minute. Let’s gather the facts.
Its not that the government can’t afford it. “Commenting on today’s Exchequer Tax Receipts for September, Tom Woods, Partner, and Head of Tax in KPMG says “cumulative corporation tax receipts for the year to date are now 71% ahead of last year”. This suggests that the Government is on track to collect a projected record €20 billion in corporation tax in 2022, albeit that the biggest corporation tax-payment month of November is yet to come.”
Government have poured billions of taxpayers money into schemes helping house purchasers afford the high cost of purchasing a home. Unfortunately, while this has given a backstop to developers seeking to sell to the public housing at unaffordable levels and allow some on high salaries afford what was beyond reach, the effect of this policy has been twofold a) due to more people able to afford higher prices, prices have gone even higher to exact even further profit from those who can ill afford it b) perhaps even more damaging than the former, developers are very savvy and calculate that even in a market marked by shortages, there is high risk if not impossible risk in selling high cost property to the general public who may well find it unaffordable. They know the party cannot last forever.
In general the above relates to property sold into the private market. In order to mitigate such problems government have the scheme for provision of Social housing often spearheaded by charities such as RESPOND https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2022/1004/1327115-respond-annual-report/
It was astonishing to see the following report by RTE Primetime on a RESPOND development in Cork:
https://www.rte.ie/player/series/prime-time/SI0000000825?epguid=IH000413056
Primetime highlighted the case of a local family unable to purchase a home from a developer who had sold the whole completed estate to RESPOND that would now use the whole development for Social Housing.
The case underlies the madness of government policy. Naively, we would assume RESPOND has its own construction people building not for profit at prices more competitive than would be provided in the private market. Nope, not at all. RESPOND is now taking houses away from the private market and paying enough profit to satisfy the private developer. In effect, this is propping up private developers and pushing up the cost of housing for all.
I won’t go into schemes such as Shared Equity…
Its such a ridiculous piece of daft nonsense even the Central Bank who led hand over fist lending property for all to those pre the crash who cant afford it, are worried at the risk it poses.
It has a daft assumption that equity raised on the sale of the home will pay off the state its stake. It’ll push up property prices. In the jargon of financial trading it amounts to a risky credit default swap of the state that puts the risk onto the shoulders of future years. We’d insurance based financial instruments in the past that lured people into insurance based tracker mortgages based on the idea of taking out an insurance policy. Assurance was given that at the end of term of the mortgage enough would be generated to not only pay off the outstanding mortgage but excess would be there to guarantee a profit payment to a person taking out such a mortgage. Such schemes collapsed with bailouts needed across the UK and Ireland.
In many ways government policy on Housing is like an old tube in a tyre patched so many times each time its patched the risk of a massive blowout increases. Not only has government policy not eased the housing crisis, it has made it worse.
There is a phalanx of civil servants and politicians from Ireland to the EU actively supporting and promoting the privatisation of the public sector whether it is Irish Water proposals to go private or an active private developer led state sector as expressed by Michael O Flynn in the above clip.
Failure of public policy in Health and Education is no obstacle to them. Expect to hear both lies and propaganda in the face of public opposition. The debacle of The National Childrens Hospital, the most expensive hospital in the world, built not in open parklands but challenged by traffic problems and extra location costs, private rooms for all challenging for future staffing and an open cheque book design, is emblematic of government lack of enterprising response to the needs of the people.
Its ironic to see Micheal Martin speaking hyprocritically at Bodenstown commemoration when his Housing policy is so tailored to the needs of Ireland’s landed ascendancy and so much a part of the exclusive interests of the EU. The falsehood that the EU is the source of our wealth instead of the presence of FDI conglomerates attracted here all of whom export worldwide is part of the propaganda sold to us.
So effective is this propaganda that even Sinn Fein propose a 32 County Republic for the whole of Ireland as part of the EU. Lest you think dear reader ideas here are rare I point you to the recent Ipsos poll
“The poll shows almost twice as many voters who expressed a preference want to remain in the United Kingdom.
In the Republic, however, there is a majority of more than four to one in favour of unity, according to a simultaneous and identical poll.”
Smart people in the north reject the lack of public services in the south compared to what they have in NI. They reject the repressive totalitarian type EU led government in the south in favour of more freedom they have in the north.
Let’s face it, FF and FG have long since not listened to the electorate but have instead led EU wide austerity measures targeting the state and public sector. They’ve also been pocketing vast amounts of wealth hoovered by politicians filling their pockets as landlords from our Rentier state backed economy feeding the rich.
The disastrous 44 days in office of Liz Truss with policies stoking tax relief for the rich is equalled here by Varadkar’s attempts to bring about similar policies here, but accountability is much lacking here simply because our politics as members of the eu has become more totalitarian. The EU has brought financial collapse stoking our property market pre 2008.
Its austerity policies have fuelled policies on property that have severely damaged our economy leading to vast emigration of talented doctors and other young people attracted by better lives elsewhere. Our policies on asylum seekers are not much better currently hundreds sleeping in tents in temps -6c freezing.
We are a long way arguably further away from a United Ireland envisioned by Wolf Tone in a form of democratic independence with Protestant and Catholic joining together on one shared island negotiating a deal with the UK as part of a shared language and culture and history …
Unfortunately, morons rule the roost. Unfortunately, we don’t have enterprising politicians such as those of the free state in Ireland’s 1920’s who brought electrification to Ireland:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon_hydroelectric_scheme
We’re unlkely to see vast amounts of German workers brought here to build state housing with a publicly available map as to where the freely provided land will be provided tax and vat free and led by Planning instead of the present incompetent ad hockery. Or similar or better proposals and plans.
But for fun we can laugh at the nonsense of our current set of politicians. When they kick the can down the road and their statistical falsehoods trip from their tongues, we can say eg: The 20,000 homes you are saying are currently being built, are they being built by cuckoo funds and filled with only for rent one bedroom studio apartments, or are they for real?
Let’s hop in the car and go for a drive around our small island with a webcam to find out where they are, who is building them, are they really being built at all? Show us the homes?
till again..
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