Nama And Social Housing

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Nama chief executive Brendan McDonagh and chairman Frank Daly at the launch of NAMA annual report 2013 in May

RTÉ reports that Nama identified more than 5,200 homes as potentially suitable for social housing.

But that only 736 have actually been delivered for such housing.

Local authorities rejected some 2,800 of the homes because they were believed to be unsuitable.

It adds:

Spokesperson for homeless charity Focus Ireland, Mike Allen says NAMA must concentrate on delivering substantial numbers of quality social housing units:

“The units have been turned down by local authorities as unsuitable for social housing now that might be that they are just badly built and they would be a huge liability or it might be that they are in areas where there is already a very high density of local authority housing and it’s not appropriate to have more.

The simple fact is that not enough homes are coming through to us from NAMA and that’s an absolute fact which we would stand over and say that something should be done about,” he said.

Calls for NAMA to focus on creating better quality social housing (RTÉ)

Previously: Nama And The Rise In Property Prices

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22 thoughts on “Nama And Social Housing

  1. Sinabhfuil

    Dublin city and suburbs are also full of empty, untenanted houses; a tax on unused housing would soon bring them into the market.

  2. Buzz

    Nama is too busy selling off our housing stock to the Canadians, creating absentee landlords, to be bothered with any of this.

    1. Ray Luna

      Eh? Everyone wants a renting market where they can enjoy long term quality leases. Having a professional institutional landlord is the way to achieve that (like in most European countries but usually fulfilled by housing associations). The 98% of renters in the ‘Canadian’ apartments don’t have to worry every year if their Garda/Nurse/Civil Servant amateur landlord won’t turf them out or will ignore basic maintenance.

      But sure what have foreigners ever done for us?!

      1. Mr. T.

        True. I’d rather real professionals were renting long term homes than a bog trotter half wit with a few extra quid from the overtime.

        1. phil

          I totally agree with, Mr T. and Ray, but one thing that disturbs me is these large money ventures like the Canadian one , in order to buy these blocks of apartments and houses they have to go to the markets to borrow money , and they are borrowing this cash at about 0% .

          Fair play to them, thats how markets work… but if you as an individual what to buy a house, you go to the bank , back agrees that you can make repayments after stress testing you , the bank then borrows money for the markets @ 0% for your mortgage and then proceeds to charge you about 5% interest in that loan.

          Of course thats how it works , but I think as a global society we need to talk about banks again …

        2. scottser

          there are many voluntary housing agencies operating in the country now. they should be facilitated in becoming the bulk providers of rented accommodation nationally. private landlordism is often a tenuous, inconsistent, unregulated area and should by rights be a tiny fraction of rented stock. there should be no way that this class become ‘the market’ and determine rental prices themselves.

      2. Zynks

        I tend to agree about the advantages that institutional investors bring to the rental market in terms of stability to tenants, but the advantages are a two-way advantage. Landlords also benefit from the predictability. It is the kind of investment where Irish pension funds should be investing on, to keep both ends of the benefits in the country.

  3. scottser

    no sign of jan o’sullivan and her nonsense claims of forcing nama to give over stock to local authorities? her ‘ending homelessness by 2016’ should be painted onto sh1te bombs and fired at her from short range.

    1. Buzz

      If a question of selling for profit to foreign investors or selling at cost to Dublin County Council, they should sell to DCC.

        1. SB

          Working for the taxpayer as in maximising the profit so we can try to recoup some of the money we poured into the banking black hole. THAT is their remit. If they can help with social housing along the way, so be it, but not at a further cost to the taxpayer. Having said that, I don’t like the idea of foreign vulture funds gaining possession of the assets, but if the vulture funds can make money from them, then we’re obviously not selling at the right price in the first place.

        2. scottser

          it’s extremely short sighted of all parties concerned to flog housing units to the highest foreign bidder, as all that profit made will eventually leave the country. at least if those units were given back to local authorities or voluntary housing agencies then the rental income would kept here. nama legislation doesn’t allow for this, so the legislation has to change. o’sullivan wouldn’t take it on, i doubt coffey will either.

  4. timble

    NAMA have made these properties available for social housing. The reason DCC and other local authorites won’t take them is because it leads to a lack of social mix, and a concentration of social housing tenants in one building, which is bad housing policy. They will take a percentage but not the whole lot.

    It’s not as simple as saying these must be given over for social housing. Otherwise the result will be ghetto’s in a number of years.

  5. JunkFace

    Poorly built Irish homes?!!! Oh what a shocker!

    …Irish builders are a laughing stock. Cutting on quality building materials, wherever they can get away with it. Illegally downsizing room sizes, squeezing every last miserable penny out of any real value for money.

    Can we get the Germans and Scandinavians in to build our homes?

    1. smoothlikemurphys

      Scandinavians? Right so.

      Choose between a one-room studio where your bed conveniently folds up to become a shower, or alternatively, you can have a log cabin.

  6. Lilly

    Pity Namawinelake blog was forced to shut down. Whoever wrote it was well informed and keeping an eagle eye on Nama.

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