Why SupplySupplySupply won’t solve the #housing affordability problem
#1 ‘we are doomed to failure if we see it purely as a game of numbers.. lowering the bar to get developers to build tiny, dim, carbon-intensive, socially-isolating, unaffordable boxes’ alastairparvin.medium.com/if-the-uk-buil…
Why SupplySupplySupply won’t solve the #housing affordability problem
#2 most claiming that supply will meet demand (at a hypothetical equilibrium) expect it to take until 2025... which suggests 4 more years of rising house prices extra.ie/2021/05/04/fea…
Why SupplySupplySupply won’t solve the #housing affordability problem
#3 Speculative developers now have high sales prices baked-in to financing.. if market prices drop they may lose funding, they can’t build & sell at a loss
*this from current apartment proposal in Dublin 7
Why SupplySupplySupply won’t solve the #housing affordability problem
#4 European Commission say it’s not costs that are the problem, it’s a lack of competition
Market is almost closed to new entrants because of high barriers to accessing land & finance ec.europa.eu/info/sites/def…
Why SupplySupplySupply won’t solve the #housing affordability problem
#5 research says ‘dysfunctional housing system, where land-price trap overly dominates’
‘fundamental change required to move to permanently affordable, stable & more sustainable system’irishtimes.com/news/social-af…
Why SupplySupplySupply won’t solve the #housing affordability problem
#6 ‘additional 1% housing stock expected to lower house prices (& rents) by around 1.5-2%, all else equal’
So SupplySupplySupply won’t solve the #housing affordability problem in a speculative property market
Supply needs to be:
🏠affordable -related to incomes
🏠scalable -not limited by high public subsidies
🏠sustainable -affordability for long term housing system, not 1st resident
Why SupplySupplySupply won’t solve the #housing affordability problem
#8 In 2006, 90,000 new homes were built in Ireland & house prices didn’t drop
House prices fell during 2008-13 in a fire sale following a financial crash, caused by property speculation (pic @finfacts)
Why SupplySupplySupply won’t solve the housing affordability problem
#9 Market prices are now being driven by ‘unprecedented amounts of global capital invested in housing as security trading on global markets’
-UN Special Rapporteur Letter to Ireland 2019 ohchr.org/Documents/Issu…
Why SupplySupplySupply won’t solve the housing affordability problem
#10 Market prices are not in the main driven by construction costs (current difficulties with pandemic & Brexit aside)
As evidenced by sales prices of private developers outside Dublin <€212,000 3-bed houses
PS #1 economist PJ Drudy
“In Dublin, multinational landlords acquired considerable numbers of apartments, free of capital gains tax, during downturn & now charge rents far beyond means of most. Such landlords have, in effect, an anti-competitive monopoly” irishtimes.com/opinion/housin…
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🇮🇪 Covid Inquiry- my comments didn’t all make it into @Independent_ie today 🧵 1/
“Over 9,600 people have died from Covid-19 in Ireland, including one hundred & forty one in the weeks since Christmas… independent.ie/irish-news/pub…
..involving 31 residents. The pandemic is not over. An estimated 10% of those infected suffer long-term effects, & this burden of illness continues to grow.
Therefore, it is likely too soon to evaluate much of Ireland’s response. Decision-making is in the same hands… 2/
However there are meaningful questions that can be asked to improve current response & future-proof Ireland against repeat of this crisis.
Firstly the scientific failure –then & now– to acknowledge how the disease spreads.
Covid-19 is airborne & no amount of hand-washing.. 3/
(from 2021): “growing body of research on COVID-19 provides abundant evidence for the predominance of airborne transmission. This route dominates under certain environmental conditions, particularly indoor environments that are poorly ventilated” 2/ ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…
“These viruses can be spread by an infected person simply by breathing. And like cigarette smoke, these viruses can linger in the air for hours in poorly ventilated spaces”
[Thread] a short story about pandemic misinformation & biased reporting
On 1 April 2021 I was contacted by a newspaper journalist.. 1/
..the journalist attached the reply received from HSPC (who collect Covid data)
It DID NOT say 1 in 1,000 cases
It gave very limited data about *42 outbreaks* investigated by HSE
It reads as someone being helpful guessing at what might be outdoors (construction, sport etc) 2/
..vast majority of Covid cases are not connected to outbreaks..& capacity to investigate outbreaks is also very limited
The journalist took a guess at *42 outbreaks* (262 cases) ..& erroneously related it to total number of cases at that time (236,600 cases, 1 April 2021) 3/
No two schools are same & conditions vary from room to room & from hour time hour
Statistically there’s an infectious child in EVERY class now, so a classroom has same risk as an isolation ward in a hospital. This is a very high risk to manage 1/
🚦 CO2 (carbon dioxide) monitors are in schools to measure exhaled air. (They don’t measure virus)
..the more people breathing, the more CO2 build up
.. the more exhaled air, the more chance of inhaling virus particles
So more clean air & fewer people reduces the risks 2/
🚦@Education_Ire guidance suggests >1500ppm is ‘poor ventilation’ but in a pandemic this is too high (3% of every breath is not clean air)
Recommended is <800ppm (<1% of every breath is not clean air)