Then the job would be oxo. I'm not sure the policy makers can fix much. Me thinks they've ended up with Father Ted's car. It will probably fix itself over time as people have fewer kids, later in life, and the population stagnates. I've advised my kids to try to marry an only child
.Increasing supply in a normal market will reduce cost. We already have the highest levels of social transfers in the EU so I don't think inequality is a problem. We just have to tax capital a bit more and tax labour a bit less.
It certainly worked in averting a looming crisis in the 1990s
I live in a cosy, warm and structurally sound house built around 22 years ago for circa €100,000. It would be illegal to build the same house anywhere in Ireland today. That's crazy.
Vastly more will be spent on the consequences of the housing and homelessness crisis.
Because, more than a decade into this ever-worsening housing crisis, during which time almost nothing has been built, we can't afford to postpone corrective action any longer.
Purpose-built new towns normally equate to ghettos.
Agreed. And if you set a low price, they won't be desirable and you place a ceiling on the type of place it will become socially.
Who'll build it? Our construction sector workforce is still more than 30% lower than it was 20 years ago, despite our population being 20% more people in the country, and the construction sector is just as labour intensive, wasteful and incompetent as it was then.
And contributed to a different crises a decade later.
What gets me is the notion that this is somehow a uniquely Irish problem. Housing affordability, a shortage of social housing and price to income multiples are a problem across most of the developed world. I see it as a consequence of the necessary response to the 2008 crash where we flooded the world with new money and the longer term effect of automation and AI on production and productivity where more wealth creation is done by capital so less of the share of created wealth is retained by labour.
not if it is done right, I'm no fan of Milton Keynes and it's numbered roundabouts and roads but I know people who live there and love it and it does seem pleasant if a bit soulless.
No it didn't. It was the panicked decision of the political class in 2009 led by the sadly dying Minister Brian Lenihan to constructively outlaw new housing building and investment that turned a temporary crisis into a permanent one, now mutating into a full-blown disaster.
Best way to avert this is not to wait at all. Stop the procrastination and solve the problem now. If we have to wait for cross-party support, we'll be here til doomsday.
San Sebastian is the polar opposite of a purpose-built new town.
It's only a global phenomenon because governments are copying each others' actions with similarly negative results. George Osborne and more recently Michael Gove have at various stages introduced into the UK the same policies that wrecked housing builds and investment in Ireland from 2009 onwards. The UK are therefore now heading in the same path as we took a decade ago. It won't end well there either.
Who'll build them? We don't have that vast pool of cheap Accession State labour this time around.
Get rid of the Levies but we need enforcement of the regulations and the State sector is useless and inefficient at doing that.
As long as ribbon development houses have to pay the full cost of connections to utilities such as eater, sewage, electricity and broadband.
Will that work?
Good idea. I'd also ban any reassessments for Rates for 10 years for shops etc that convert their upper floors to residential units.
Areas turning into ghettos is not a result of the properties, it is a result of the residents.
We didn't have them in 1997-2001 either and things still worked out fine.
No, we need fewer regulations.
No. I want to encourage building, not discourage it.
No idea. A variation of it worked wonders last time round. It's worth trying. The beauty of it is that if it doesn't work or is a flop, it can be reversed overnight.
Or even their lower floors.
Completions went from 35.5k to 47.5k during that time with a growth rate that was consistent since 1991. The big increase in completions came after 2001. We've a million more people in the country, our construction workforce is still 30% below the peek and the whole global economy has changed.
I'm fine with that but we need to enforce whatever ones we have. That requires State employees and they always slow things down.
But that's a massive subsidy from the State to the home owner. That constitutes very bad value for money.
True.
Yep.