I agree with the headline, HAP has certainly driven up prices. However that doesn't mean HAP is a bad thing. HAP would not be driving up prices in any meaningful way if there were simply more properties available, which is the root of most of the problems we're facing in the housing market at present.
Yep, it's all about supply.
We've repeated the same mistake of creating areas where we house disadvantaged families in clusters over and over. Multiple studies have shown that if you mix disadvantaged families in with more privileged families they have better outcomes for themselves and ultimately society. It's just common sense really; if you're a kid walking to school and you see people in your area dealing drugs or sitting on a couch in the front garden vs. walking through a well maintained neighbourhood with none of those issues you will have totally different role models and aspirations. HAP is an effective way of facilitating this.
There is certainly an issue around enforcement against anti-social behaviour in certain cases. It is not fair for somebody to put all their life savings and commit to 30 years of debt to buy a property and find they are living beside individuals who cause trouble for them, devalue their property etc. But throwing HAP out the window and building ghettos is not the way to deal with this issue.
In one of the least densely populated countries in Europe one has to wonder why we have amongst the most expensive houses. We have larger households, lots of land and a large construction sector. Not only is the State pricing people out of the housing and rental markets but the general incompetence of the State, both the government we elect and the permanent Government who actually run things, is, I think, the root cause of the problem.
We don't have a single database showing who owns what property and what they are worth.
We have no functioning method of accurately calculating property taxes.
It takes years, sometimes decades, to build homes.
Because of our grossly inefficient public sector we have to charge high levies on new builds.
Because of our grossly inefficient public sector we buy existing and privately supplied new build houses and apartments out from underneath private purchasers instead of building new ones.
Because of our grossly inefficient public sector we rent existing and privately supplied new build houses and apartments out from underneath private purchasers instead of building and renting out new ones.
Because NAMA purchased land from hundreds of bankrupt developers and then sold off large portfolios to a small number of large companies there is effectively an oligopoly controlling the supply and therefore the price of development land.
Because of our grossly inefficient and incompetent public sector and government we seem unable to use our laws and tax code to correct that problem.