[ToucanLoucan]

Literally in the headline of the source you linked states 20% are affordable or social housing, not all social housing.

And a ten second google about what "social housing" means as I'm not Irish and don't know, tells me that social housing is not, in fact, free and is instead adjusted rent based on your ability to pay. I suppose it's not impossible that some of it is free, since some people may not be able to pay anything, but this is some incredible goal post shifting from:

> Government is giving free houses

To:

> By law all new developments are required to have 20% social housing

Which then after going to your linked source became:

> Law change to make 20% of units in new developments affordable or social homes

So 1 in 5 newly developed homes has to be affordable or social housing, which is rented, not gifted as property to the unfortunate resident. The horror.

You're of course entitled to disagree with these measures and programs, but if you have to go so far as to be within shouting distance of outright lying, it kind of implies you don't have a good position that can be backed by the actual facts on the ground as opposed to your ideological predispositions.

[negamax]

Have you heard of HAP? Please read up on it. It's budget and impact on the everyday person. It's a roundabout way to giving free housing to people who don't work by taking money from people who do.

End result is a broken and inflated marketplace

[ToucanLoucan]

Sure. But speaking as an American, our housing market is plenty inflated and absolutely ridiculous, and we do everything just about short of shooting the homeless on sight here. So giving people places to live I don't think is the direct correlation to an inflated market that you think it is.

And like, to be totally honest and pinko commie scum of me, I am completely fine with being slightly less well off if it means people in my area get taken care of. That doesn't bother me.

[romafirst3]

I totally agree on principle but for those who are stuck in a transactional mindset (conservative/libertarian etc) I would argue that paying for housing and welfare for poor people is just good business sense. Crime is incredibly expensive and when pushed to the edge people disconnected from society are more likely to both need to perform crime to survive but also have nothing to lose from performing criminal acts. If you take care of people's basic needs with a safety net you actually enable them to contribute to society (economically and culturally) and it is a couple of order of magnitudes cheaper than criminalizing them. And guess what, people still desire to earn more money, so they still have plenty of drive to better themselves, they just aren't completely fucked if they fall on hard times.

[ToucanLoucan]

Oh yeah, this has been understood logic for like... ever. I felt this way even back when I self-identified as a libertarian. Now as a lefty I feel similarly.

But people in the states especially and even in parts of Europe are so hard up on this notion that the criminals are just criminals from birth, barely even human, just waiting for some way to exploit larger society or worse, them personally, somehow to "steal" their way to "the easy life" and it's just so detached from reality. Are there people who are just remorseless psychopaths ready to harm anyone at a moments notice for their own gain? Yeah, sure are, most of them end up being cops. The rest are people who are given few if any options to get by, and if crime is your only option to getting a meal, of course you're going to commit a fucking crime. It's like these people expect the homeless to just lie down and await death instead of stealing food.