[dbspin]

Just to lend an Irish perspective. This is not necessarily popular here. Our governments move to sue to prevent having Apple pay 16 billion in tax evasion fines (to Ireland), was extremely unpopular - https://www.bbc.com/news/business-53416206

Just as in the US, there's growing suspicion of the pseudo economic growth that an economy constructed around construction and providing tax avoidance opportunities to big-tech provides. We have one of the worst housing crises in Europe, massive economic inequality, cost of living increases, enormous and growing issues with homelessness and street heroin abuse and so on. Many of which directly track with how the economy has responded to tech firms setting up here.

Meanwhile we don't have the resources for the state to engage in the massive housing construction thats sorely need as our population grows, solve our urban congestion issues, invest in public transport etc.

It's been a terrible deal for Ireland, and the country is in many ways a worse place to live than it was fifteen years ago - during the 'great recession'.

[injb]

It's not clear that it's necessary for the state to engage in housing construction. There's plenty of money for people to pay for houses. But there has been no building for the last decade while the population has exploded.

Why not? People who have land don't want to sell it, and they don't have to. But neither can they build on it because it's trivially easy to stop any building project by objecting.

So you have one group of people holding on to land like their lives depended on it, trying to increase the value, and another group trying to lower the value of that land and increase the value of their own homes by preventing the owners from building on it.

[wkat4242]

> There's plenty of money for people to pay for houses.

Well, you really have to mortgage yourself to the hilt to buy a house now in Ireland, it's ridiculous. With a single normal (non-director etc) wage it's almost impossible.

> So you have one group of people holding on to land like their lives depended on it, trying to increase the value, and another group trying to lower the value of that land and increase the value of their own homes by preventing the owners from building on it.

I was told that when the republic was founded land ownership was forbidden (or public or something) to avoid this very thing? But this was a pretty 'severe' person, maybe they were bending the truth. I don't know.

But the objection system is crazy yes. It doesn't explain though how Ireland was one big building site before the credit crisis and now nothing is being built.

The whole country (outside Dublin) is one big empty space and yet houses in such shortage that the prices are extreme :( There's more than enough space for everyone to live comfortably and affordably.

Also, I don't really agree that having houses nearby would decrease the value of the existing ones. Houses in urban areas are generally much more expensive than those in backwater villages. And a lot of people prefer to live in urban areas. In fact this is one of the reasons I left the country. Outside Dublin every town is way too small to have decent services and Dublin is way too expensive to live there.

[dbspin]

>There's plenty of money for people to pay for houses. But there has been no building for the last decade while the population has exploded.

Alas that money is not in the hands of those who need them.

I'd suggest that it is absolutely clear that it is essential for the state to build and provide housing, given that there is a massive crisis which the market is utterly incapable of addressing.

[injb]

>> Alas that money is not in the hands of those who need them.

Well literally everyone needs a home so I have to disagree. No matter who has the money, they need a home. It's not like only a small number of people in Ireland have money.

The issue now is supply. When there isn't enough of something it always gets expensive. The fix is not necessarily to build more cheap homes, it's just to build more homes, period. Even if they're only affordable to middle class people, that's fine because it will free up the cheaper places they're living in now.

>> I'd suggest that it is absolutely clear that it is essential for the state to build and provide housing, given that there is a massive crisis which the market is utterly incapable of addressing.

Why do think the state is capable of addressing it better than the market?

[dbspin]

> Why do think the state is capable of addressing it better than the market?

Because the status quo isn't working. There are by contrast state housing provided solutions that are working to allow people to live affordably, even in expensive european countries. See Vienna

https://www.politico.eu/article/vienna-social-housing-archit...

> Well literally everyone needs a home so I have to disagree. No matter who has the money, they need a home.

Agreed. Everyone needs and should have a right to a home. However if you have means in Ireland you are likely not in danger of homelessness, likely not living in a literal slum, and can to a much greater extent protect yourself from abusive behaviour from rentiers. You're not in the emergency situation many of us find ourselves in currently.

> The fix is not necessarily to build more cheap homes, it's just to build more homes, period.

Absolutely. We need to build a vast amount of new homes. Most of these need to be much more affordable than the existing supply - which is currently out of the reach of an entire generation - https://www.irishtimes.com/your-money/2023/03/07/housing-cos...

[injb]

>>> Because the status quo isn't working

I don't think I can follow your logic here. The private sector isn't building houses, and the government isn't building houses. No one is building houses. How can you use this to conclude that only the government building houses can work?

Presumably there are compelling economic reasons why private builders aren't building enough, but I don't see why the government is not subject to those same reasons.

Worrying about affordability when there's a chronic shortage is focusing on a symptom rather than on the problem itself. They're only unaffordable because there aren't enough. Whenever there isn't enough of something, money decides who gets it and who goes without. That might seem unfair and that's a whole discussion on it's own but the bottom line is that there isn't a fair solution as long as there are more families than homes.

[robertlagrant]

> the market is utterly incapable of addressing

Based on what evidence?