Housing crisis and unaffordable rent costs in Ireland, caused by immigration?

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A Generation in Ireland is being forced to emigrate because of Govt failure on housing.

"I have a degree, I have a master's, I'm living at home, my boyfriend has emigrated... And I just don't see a future in this country. And these are professionals. I was just looking in the headlines, that schools in Dublin, primary schools, 62 percent of posts are vacant; outside of Dublin, 9 percent. It is because they can't afford to live here. Teachers can't get jobs, guards can't, nurses... Like you talk about hidden homelessness... the Simon Community did a survey which said 250,000 people in a poll they did were potentially in situations like this. Like this is just..."
"Is it just Ireland? Like, is it happening in all other countries? Because there are other countries..."
"Of course there is, but I just showed you the rent costs in Dublin versus... It is nothing like Ireland. Ireland has the worst housing crisis in the EU, and there are other countries that are similar, because they followed similar policies. But there are other countries that don't have this crisis, like Finland, because they do it completely differently."

Ireland AM, episode 322

As some of you may be aware, the country of Ireland took in a lot of immigration during their tech boom, from the mid 1990s to 2007, which was kind of an economic bubble. The Irish still have in their collective memory the time during the mid-1800s when the Irish people were so poor and destitute they had to immigrate en masse to London and America. So, for the most part, they were happy when their country became a destination for immigrants, during their economic boom. That tech boom is now mostly over, but many of the immigrants have remained.

This seems to have put a big strain on the country's housing supply. And with housing shortages, predictable rents and housing prices went up.
Viewed from one perspective, because Ireland took in people from other countries, now Irish people are going to have leave to other countries.

Of course most of the Irish refuse to see any link between their housing crisis and their immigration policy. This is going just going to push the Irish people further to the Left as they complain about the government not solving their housing crisis.

 

It’s not just happening in Ireland.

 

One of the ironies is that, in Ireland during the bubble, they brought in a lot of immigrants to do the work of building houses. But it turned out many people could not end up affording those houses. People lost their good paying jobs that were connected to the tech bubble and construction bubble, and then defaulted on their mortgages.
Another problem was that many of these housing developments were built in the wrong areas. During the height of the bubble it had seemed that a house built anywhere would sell. Many of these houses were never even finished, because the bubble popped before the construction was completed.
Most of these immigrant construction workers who were building the new houses could not really afford the new homes they were creating.

As a result, there were still not enough new houses built to accommodate all the additional population from immigration. And there are some people now stuck living in dilapidated communities that are a far distance away from any good job opportunities. Some of the houses are being held by banks and no one can afford it, and the banks don't want to let the houses go. Ireland is poorer than other parts of Europe and has a lower rate of car ownership. Unfortunately much of the new housing communities built during the bubble were designed and built for an affluent middle class who it was assumed would have cars to get around and commute to work.

 

Ireland is suffering from the "longest and most severe" housing crisis the country has ever experienced according to Macdara Doyle, an advocate for housing reform in Ireland. Ireland’s housing crisis has pushed millions of people out of their homes and into poverty with seemingly no end. Irish housing prices and evictions are through the roof.
The housing market has been unable to keep pace with Ireland’s population growth and urban concentration. There are rough estimates that to keep pace with the population growth and job density in cities, particularly in Dublin, there must be 45,000 new houses built a year. Unfortunately, the average annual number since 2015 has been 15,000. The cost of building materials has remained high since the early 2000s.​

source: Ireland’s Housing Crisis Driving Millions Into Poverty - The Borgen Project

 

Every place that has homelessness, a housing crisis, or unaffordable housing has that problem because of the exact same government policy -- shoveling money into landowners' pockets for keeping desirable locations vacant -- and none of those governments have any intention of changing it.

 

That is not true, although that could depend how you look at it.
Almost every place that has a housing shortage, has a large number of people trying to live there. Only a small percent of the homes are empty in these places.
Although I suppose talking about "a lot" or "only a small amount" is meaningless unless we throw out some rough numbers.

Could they fit more people into these areas? Yes, but how many more, and at what cost, what would that look like? If the proposed solution would only allow 15% more people to live there, and would have some big trade-offs, like increasing the overcrowding of buildings, then I would say that is not really a long-term solution to the housing shortage problem.

 

It is indisputably true. You just prefer not to look at it or know it.

Garbage. Every major city that has a significant housing problem has thousands of vacant residential lots. Most of those lots have been vacant for years, many of them for decades. Their owners do not put housing on them because they get money shoveled into their pockets either way. Likewise, the owners of vacant housing do not allow anyone to live there because the money that is shoveled into their pockets for owning the land gets shoveled in anyway.

But you are wrong. Free market processes would naturally provide affordable housing for all. The fact that everyone is forced to subsidize landowners who do nothing but hold desirable residential land vacant proves the housing market is far from being a free one.

 

If you want to look at this more logically and mathematically, the question would be what percent of the homes or available building space is vacant, and then how much does this differ compared to other normal cities that do not have a housing shortage problem.

I am just afraid the issue people like you might actually be trying to bring up is just trying to jam more people and more housing into an area, where it might be possible to do so, but the issue that led to the problem in the first place was too many people. And the solution you propose might not be sustainable in the long term, and would also come with several detrimental trade-offs. It's not good if there is not enough open space in a city area.

When we ask what "the problem is", what exactly does that mean actually mean? I don't think we can really have a discussion about that until we clarify what it is we are actually talking about.

It is only natural in any city area that a certain amount of the housing is going to be vacant. That is part of the market system, and does ultimately play a role in economic efficiency, even if it is not an inherently "efficient" thing itself. Much of this is due to the market trying to most market efficiently connect the demand to supply.

bringiton, I am not sure if you know what type of policies you actually want to pursue, or if you realize what the effects of those policies will be. Trying to jam more people into a city that already has too many people is possible, but is not ideal. It will result in many problems and result in a decrease in the quality of life for the other people already living in the city. And you can't just keep adding more and more people over a long period of time. Eventually the problems and detrimental effects resulting from that will not be practical. That is why I say it is not really a "long term solution".

The people who already live in these cities want to preserve what small amount of open space remains in their city, and that is entirely understandable. That does not mean them not wanting more homes to be built is "the problem".

 

No, that is not the question. The question is just, "How much money will the community shovel into your pockets for keeping desirable locations vacant/unused?"

The issue is never too many people. The issue is always too little honesty, too little wisdom, too little knowledge, too little honesty, too little courage, too little liberty, and too little honesty.

Open space?? You mean like, ground-level parking lots?

It means, "What evil policy is causing people to be forcibly deprived of what they would otherwise have?"

I'm quite clear on what it is we are actually talking about: solving the basic problem of economics: scarcity.

The more vacant land/housing there is in a community, the lower the price should be. But that doesn't happen when keeping it vacant is profitable.

I think I have been clear on both points.

What makes you think any city with a housing problem "already has too many people"? By what criterion?

Garbage. More people = more opportunity.

What on earth are you even talking about? Of course you can.

Tokyo says you are wrong.

And you are wrong.

It's also understandable that people want to take things from others without paying for them. Same principle: greed.

The problem is that violating others' rights to liberty without making just compensation for what you are taking from them is profitable.

 

And nothing to do with immigration.

Also a problem in Australia. Record housing crisis, record low access to immigrant labour.

 

No mention of immigrants in this post.

 

There is more than one factor going on. I think you are letting the short-term factor obscure your view of the longer-term factor.

There also exists a small lag time between when people in a society become poorer and when housing prices go down. The Australian Central Bank has just raised interest rates.
People becoming poorer also exacerbates the housing crisis a little bit because then they cannot afford high rise housing that builds upward in the cities.

When you have more people who are poor, that will also create a housing crisis, but a different type of housing crisis. Instead of housing becoming more unaffordable for the majority, instead housing will just become more unaffordable for a section of society (maybe 10 or 25%) experiencing financial problems, without really causing a problem for the rest of the society or the "average person".

 

I think you are prejudiced against immigration as a form of population increase. Immigrants do the dirty Jobs.

 

In conclusion, Melb_muser, I have explained the following:
How just because the housing crisis has been getting worse when immigration went down, over a short interval of time, does not in any way mean immigration is not the main cause of the housing crisis.
How there are two different "types" of housing crisis. So even if there is a "crisis", that does not necessarily mean that it is due to prices going up (real prices adjusted for inflation).

 

It's a pyramid scheme. Do you think you can just keep bringing in more people to keep supporting the bottom of the pyramid indefinitely?
That is a how a multilevel marketing scam works.

Eventually the pyramid distribution becomes top heavy. Either that or you start having to increase the amount of people continually being added exponentially. Something that is just usually not ultimately sustainable, for a variety of reasons.

 

Immigration is most certainly not the main cause of the housing crisis. The only real cause is that people have been forcibly stripped of their natural individual liberty right to use land without just (or any) compensation. As Henry George proved over 140 years ago in "Progress and Poverty," the Law of Rent implies that any increase in the labor force -- whether by immigration, increased workforce participation by women, or natural population increase -- will tend to increase land rents and suppress wages. And as Joseph Stiglitz proved 50 years ago, the Henry George Theorem implies that any attempt by government to make up for that by providing increased services, benefits, or infrastructure will only make the problem worse. The ONLY POSSIBLE solution is to make just compensation for the legal removal of people's rights to liberty by landowners.

 

All of these cities are overcrowded and have limited remaining land for building. Sure, it could theoretically be possible to cram even more people into there, but then there would be absolutely no open spaces left, and very quickly there would be absolutely no empty land left. I and many others think that would be unreasonable.

Your argument might be correct, but it is not correct in these densely populated city areas.

I don't know why you would think your argument would be correct in an area where, say, 80% of the land has already been built on.

 

Yes, immigration does play a part.

However the main reason housing in crisis througout the Western World, is simply because the short term anomally of each of us (alone or in pairs) having our own private residence, has been dragged on long past population critical masses. It's an absurd expectation, and one which doesn't exist anywhere else in the world - for good reason. The space, materials, services, and infrastructure needed to provide such an outrageous luxury, are finite. Push those resources too far and this is what you get .. property becoming more and more 'precious' in the minds of those who expect individual housing. In reality it's not that precious .. it's just that we don't use what we have properly. For example an American 'family home' could house three families, and thus the cost to each family would be a third what it is to a sole family. That $1mil McMansion suddenly becomes affordable.

The irony is that migrants are actually much better at multigenerational housing, so while it's immigration causing pressure on housing stock, it's not migrants who are 'wasting' it.

 

True. And 10% or thereabouts of houses are vacant. It's a disgrace.

 

No they aren't. When I got back to North American cities after living in East Asia, I thought, "Where is everybody?"

Everything is limited... except the stupidity and dishonesty of apologists for landowner greed, privilege and parasitism, of course.

That is false and absurd. There are thousands of vacant lots in every major city that has a housing crisis, and thousands more that are under-utilized or contain vacant housing. The major streets are often lined with dilapidated one- and two-story commercial buildings whose owners would love to build high-rise apartment buildings on them, but can't get permission.

Because it has no relation to reality.

Manhattan is densely populated, but it is effectively the only urban area in the USA that is.

Where is that? Manhattan? Hong Kong? Having lived there, I can tell you for a fact that far less than 80% of the land in Tokyo has been built on, even not counting the area devoted to parks and road and rail infrastructure. It doesn't matter if land has been built on if the buildings are vacant, and my argument is most definitely correct in an area where 80% of lots have been built on, but the average footprints of the buildings occupy far less than half the land, and the average building is less than three stories tall.

 

That 10% is not the problem. It's the other 90% being horribly underutilised.

 

I would say it's part of the problem. Nice to have concurring yet different opinions, isn't it?

 

It's by far the biggest factor in a First World housing crisis. Nothing else is even close.

Until we get over our 'infinite supply' entitlement, nothing will change. No Govt or society on earth can house 8 billion people individually. Or even 4 billion, or 2 billion. It's the absolute height of privileged thinking to expect it as a right - and shitty as hell to be resentful when it doesn't happen easily and magically.

 

Nonsense. The only significant factor in all housing crises is the uncompensated forcible removal of people's individual liberty rights to use land to house themselves. In capitalist countries, this is done through legal expropriation of people's liberty rights and their conversion into landowners' private property (Google "enclosures" and start reading). In socialist economies, people's individual liberty rights to use land are taken through collective.ownership -- but they are not justly compensated for what is taken from them any more than in capitalist economies.

No one I have heard of thinks they have any such entitlement. People know, subconsciously, that they are being deprived of housing, but they don't understand how. They can't even imagine any more what it would be like to have a right to liberty.

Wrong. As the favelas of Latin America prove, if people have the liberty right to use land, 4G, 8G, 16G or 32 G of them can house themselves. They just can't do it when their liberty rights to use land have been stripped from them without just compensation. The difference between the people in the favelas and our homeless population is that our governments enforce landowner privilege more strictly than theirs.

The problem is, people know they should be able to get a place to live, but they don't understand that the reason they can't is that their actual rights -- their liberty rights to use land -- have been forcibly removed and made into landowners' private property. So they make up a right to housing.

 

Where are 1

Where are 10% of houses vacant?