| > 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... |
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.