To mark World Homeless Day.
An evening with homelessness activist Peter McVerry’ including a screening of the documentary Peter McVerry: A View From The Basement and a chat with Fintan O’Toole at the Light House Cinema starting at 6.30pm.
Alternatively:
Peter McVerry at the launch of the Action Plan on Homelessness last month
….Fr Peter McVerry wants to get back to the 80s, where we were building up to 8,000 “social houses” every year. Why? Does he see home ownership as a bad thing? Why else would he be so in favour of inflating the “social housing” market – property that would forever remain in the state’s hands?
The British Left never forgave Thatcher for “right to buy,” which allowed the low income to buy their council houses. Private property being the original sin of the Left, this broke the chains that bound many of Britain’s poorer with the powerful state. US broadcaster Dennis Prager says “the bigger the state, the smaller the citizen,” and that’s what gets Leftists votes.
We entirely sympathise with people on short-term leases, who can see a hike in their rent down the road. But what do you expect with such an appallingly regulated sector? Landlords are only in that favourable position due to that tired but true term: supply-and-demand.
If the stock of housing were to keep up with demand, no landlord could afford to lose good, reliable tenants; longer-term leases, with rent freezes, would be a competitive advantage as landlords sought the best tenants. (And, given that we rate tradesmen, teachers and restaurants online, why not throw in a website that rates tenants?)
The market rate is, after all, contingent on what the state will allow it to be, reflective of land zoning, planning permission, and a plethora of costly regulations.
Alas, I dare say, many of McVerry’s supporters would be the same type of people who would turn their noses up at a block of apartments being built in their neighbourhood.
Of course McVerry is correct on many points; relative to wages, housing is stupidly expensive in Ireland. But the solutions are not so forthcoming.
Releasing state-controlled land; building taller buildings to make better use of acreage and afford us the density of population required to make quality public transport possible; tackling the cost of grossly inflated agricultural land – all of these solutions are actively fought by progressives.
You can’t have a competitive property market and an 19th Century idyll at the same time, folks.
We need sustainable solutions here. We need tough, open discussions. We need accurate figures. McVerry’s is not the only voice in this debate.
Rollingnews
Who’s speaking at the evening event? I can’t make it out from that poster.
Thanks for the hibernia link, I love the taste of my own vomit
More importantly, who is the utter gobdaw in Hibernia whose splutterings have just assaulted my eyes? A complete and utter misunderstanding (wilfull?) of the case that Fr. McVerry and other campaigners are making, coupled with the usual neo-con tripe about “socialist utopias blah, blah,blah” which are trotted out every time someone has something constructive to say on an important social issue. Where do these people come from?
All McVerry, all the time, baby!
that hibernia piece is really self-contradicting. he seems to say both that social housing is bad because it will mean people can’t buy but then he says it’s bad because people can buy their social housing and somehow theyll be tied to the state then??
“Releasing state-controlled land;”
This the great trick/lie of neo liberals; framing “the state” as an entity which exists to work *against* you. State controlled land is ours. He is proposing giving land we all own to one person; a literal transfer of wealth upwards. The only question is are Hibernia incompetent and actually believe that horsepoo or are they aware it’s horsepoo and consciously trying to mislead you.
“Leftist” is such a useful word; I know I can easily disregard anything said by somebody that uses it.
But it’s ok to say conservative or right wing?
Yeah, it’s fine to say conservative or right wing in much the same way it’s fine to say progressive or left wing, they’re words that describe ideas. “Leftist” has different connotations to those words though.
i’m not sure of lalor’s point. mcverry is a homeless campaigner and his viewpoint comes from a perspective of preventing homelessness – why wouldn’t he advocate for more social housing units? only the most right-wing are sticking to their guns insisting money should be spent elsewhere.
as for tenant purchases in the 1980’s over a third of those properties are now rented to private tenants at incredibly inflated prices.
‘You can’t have a competitive property market and an 19th Century idyll at the same time, folks.’ take a bow for strawman of the day.
God almighty. Seeing home ownership as a bad thing is – shockingly – not the only reason someone might support an increase in social housing. There is literally nothing wrong with there being State owned property unless you have some bizarre ideological fetish for private property. Some people will never afford their own homes. We cannot let them live in the gutter. They will therefore be supported by the State. We can do this through building homes which can (a) in future be used to support other people or (b) be sold to recoup the cost of building, and which will (c) increase the housing stock available so the cost of buying and renting is reduced. Or we can continue to shovel money into paying extortionate rent to private landlords who, by the way, have never unilaterally decided to increase standards and security by themselves without State intervention, regardless of the state of the market. It is not some Bolshevist conspiracy to choose the most humane and sensible option.
TL;DR – fupp off Hibernia
here, here!
Exactly. The best way for the state to ensure standards in the sector is to ideally build, manage and control social housing.
The system of local authorities building housing worked well (more or less) between the 1930s and the 1990s. Something has gone seriously wrong recently and I am not sure what the root cause is. Local authorites are building next to no new dwellings, buying the odd few here and there while at the same time SELLING off others to their own tenants.
Some kind of national authority with dedicated funding, strong CPO powers and a mandate to deliver new units is the answer because local authorities don’t have the capacity any more.
Yep. Strawman in the second sentence.
Also that second paragraph, why bring the UK into it?
We have had council house purchase schemes in this country for years. It was updated this year.
Also, who the hell is Dennis Prager, apart from a US broadcaster, which we know is a fairly low bar in terms of adding to political discourse.
Also, Supply and demand is not an excuse for being an absolute bastard.
As a matter of social policy the argument made is that tying people into long term dependency on the state for housing creates a permanent underclass and multi-generational ghetto poverty. I’ll accept it was being poorly expressed
“Of course McVerry is correct on many points; relative to wages, housing is stupidly expensive in Ireland. But the solutions are not so forthcoming.”
Right wingers always pretend whatever ‘Leftist’ highlights a problem in the economy must therefore come up with the solution. It’s like blaming a victim of street crime for not working out how to prevent it.
Hibernia Forum is a slow walk into Fascism.
Hibernia – The Opus Dei of the right-hand side of the already Lassez-Faire FG – “Let the Morket alleviate all social ills, it helps that we hold all the cards too, and said cards are stacked in our favour and sure we’ll be bailed out by the taxpayer anyway when we inevitably kill the golden goose”
“property that would forever remain in the state’s hands”?
And here my friends is the nub of the housing problem……….. practically every local authority house built since the foundation of the state is now in private ownership, sold for a song by the local authority and bought (and probably resold) by the owner for a fat profit.
or townhouses with front and back gardens, some with waterfront views, built in the heart of the city instead of using the land to house many families.
McVerry is a bigger part of the problem that he is of the solution
‘practically every local authority house built since the foundation of the state is now in private ownership’
not true. local authority provides social housing support and housing can be under a number of schemes that include long-term leasing, RAS, HAP, CAS-assisted voluntary housing etc. not all of which can be bought.
you have a large bucket of tar and an extremely unwieldy brush, my friend.
“Alas, I dare say, many of McVerry’s supporters would be the same type of people who would turn their noses up at a block of apartments being built in their neighbourhood.”
Well, that’s a reflection on Hibernia’s thinking, not McVerry’s supporters’. We have 68 social housing units being built right next door. Half houses already completed and occupied. Radical social change? Not at all, just normal stuff – more children on the green, more passers-by, new faces in local shops. Stress on infrastructure is visible though. Nearest bus stop already serving a lot of people in the morning, buses get filled up in a jiffy. It can still absorb the new dwellers, but once the rest of houses are occupied…
He kind of sets out his stall at the start of his piece, when he asks does McVerry not see that social housing would inflate the market and accuses him (somehow) of being against home ownership. As pointed out above by scottser, McVerry is a homeless campaigner in the middle of a homelessness criss that has seen a record number of families, many with kids, living on the streets. That Lalor can’t see this perspective and the social (if not moral) need to address the crisis, IMO, says a huge amount about him. His suggestions about state-controlled land, taller buildings, etc. are not wrong, but it’s easy to see where his priorities lie.
The Hibernia Forum crew all seem to adopt the same neo-liberal perspective that anything that interferes with their hallowed “free market” is a Leftist conspiracy, tied into some Big Government, Big Brother-style future. “The bigger the state, the smaller the citizen” & all that crap. They equate the “free market” with actual democracy, which is an insane, disgusting lie – quackery of the highest order.
– thank you
By the authors own arguments, supply-and-demand and market forces sufficient to solve the problem if only the nasty state & campaigners would get out of the way.
There is derelict land all over Dublin, we have skilled tradesmen unemployed, we have massive pent up housing demand from all levels the state has provided funding, banks are lending again but….nothing.
No housing starts, no great construction effort apart from offices. Why not? Builders are sitting on their hands waiting for tax write offs to start. State has to step in.
“Private property being the original sin of the Left”. Interesting that nobody wants to discuss this point. As far as I can see, many left wingers despise homeowners, especially middle class ones.
Yes and they do love to sneer at you Peter – ever noticed that? Ever wondered why at all?
Possibly because it’s not a point being made, but part of a genuinely confusing sentence. I haven’t seen any vitriol towards homeowners, are you thinking of landlords maybe? Also, why does your username contain a link to a comment you made a couple of months ago?
No I don’t just mean landlords. The ‘all property is theft’ mantra covers people who own one house (a PDH) and those with investment properties. A member of WSM verbally confirmed that they despise both groups equally
Rubbish.
“As far as I can see, many left wingers despise homeowners, especially middle class ones.”
It doesn’t sound like you can see very far.
Whilst the use of ‘the Left’, ‘progressives’, etc, bores me to tears, there is one undeniable fact included here. Very few normal-thinking individuals would object to people who are trying their best to get a job, work hard, build a life for themselves being awarded social housing. What many do find less appealing, self-included, are what would have been commonly referred to back in the day as ‘wasters’ being treated in the same bracket.
People who refuse a council house because it might make them seasick or hasn’t a big enough garden for a trampoline. People who think they’re entitled to piss away their dole on booze/drugs and then have the state pay their rent. I’m all for booze/drugs, I just believe in paying for my own consumption. I’d have no problem with social housing in my area – once I knew it wasn’t going to be allocated to the sort of people who think the state owes them a living.
That won’t be popular around here.