Citizen Iceberg
Cold facts do not lie, or do they?
Yesterday a big thing happened.
Two important questions where asked of Laois County Council, and the answers to those questions were posted to twitter by Derek Blighe and it went viral as they say.
The number of people on the Laois Housing list broken down into Irish Citizens, European Citizens and Non European Citizens.
The number of persons in Laois receiving HAP once again broke up into Irish Citizens, European Citizens, Non European Citizens
This prompted the creation of a new site section to the irelandisfull.com site for tracking hosing list statistics as they are sourced, click the button below to go directly:
Small Fry, Whats the Big Deal?
Taking a closer look at the details of the Freedom Of Information request and reply, here is a breakdown with some clearer graphics.
HAP
In other news today, it was reported to date, there have been approx. 106,701 HAP tenancies in affect, in the Irish rental market since it’s inception, with other reports indicating an approx. total of 72,000 tenancies for the year 2022, making the Laois numbers look small fry.
Understandably most reacted to the social housing list figures, and many, rightly wondering why anyone who is not local or even from outside of Ireland should be on one or more Local County Council housing lists in the first place, left it at that.
However the real treasures unearthed by the Freedom Of Information request , were the HAP numbers, because here lies a compelling story rarely exposed to the light of day. The housing list has been there for generations, but HAP is very new.
HAP or Housing Assistance Payment being a relatively new adventure by the so-called Government in it’s attempts at housing policy, was established in 2014 (the important year) regionally, but was not rolled out nationally until 2017.
Laois may represent a microcosm of the true depths of #HousingTreason.
One might see a State using Local Government to reach over into, with well financed tentacled arms, the domain of private rental stock to siphon and squeeze supply, to plug a gap in the neglected social housing infrastructure, in a classic rob peter to pay paul scenario, and yet this may not be the whole truth, but only be a portion of the truth.
If the Laois HAP figures were the national HAP figures, this would mean approx. 27,000 private tenancies in Ireland are supported or subsidised (you pick) by the exchequer, and of those nearly 53% go to non-irish citizens.
In this What-If Laois was Ireland exercise, the purpose is to demonstrate how much more complex things have become compared to any old housing list, the what-if points to a staggering vista if it were representatively true;
The Irish state directly funds 26% of all private rents.*
53% of those supported rents would be going to non-Irish Citizens rent.
In a property market the price is often set by 10% of the transactions, here the State directly funds 26% of the market, and thus indirectly sets market prices.
The State is essentially the largest tenant-by-proxy (of-funding) in a market that it also heavily regulates the back of, and in recent times in a highly arbitrary manner, and can also influence at scale market prices with zero competition.
Tip Of The Iceberg
Private rental tenancies are in decline annually by the thousands, which is both alarmingly bad news for renters.
So as landlords leave the market in droves the current rental market is approx 276,000 tenancies - how much more of this private market is going to disappear by being insidiously converted into #Socialism4All?
The consequences continue to stagger.
If you think #IrelandForAll is not already deeply ingrained in Ireland’s so-called Government’s housing policies, you are deeply mis-informed, and that’s but one problem, much of this story has remained hidden or ignored by the media, but HAP has grown into a beast of a thing, and it is thrashing the rental market and lives accordingly.
HAP is a double edged sword that supports a section of tenants to secure stable housing, but it comes at great systemic cost, by introducing other instabilities and volatilities that were previously more cyclical and less ravaging for all tenants (an landlords) prospective or otherwise, especially those who are not financially backed by the HAP slush fund.
More
The so-called Government and it’s adventures in housing more often ruin Irish lives than save them, thus burdening Irish families by not only funding local demand, but foreign demand at mass scale (this is unprecedented)
This has led to increased demand and competition for the finite resource of housing, and why #IrelandIsFull.
That has caused rapid price increases, encouraged massive foreign demand to turn up to play at the table, where it would not have a look in unless it could pay it’s way.
All of this has caused unprecedented and historically chronic supply shortages further exacerbating rapid rent increases and growing all round housing misery, and if you think this is the full story, it is not.
In the Irish housing story, or disaster epic (you pick), the cold hard facts today, will soon be seen for as good as lies tomorrow, once the full picture of #HousingTreason is revealed to the Irish people, and in that context Laois is only the tip of the iceberg.
Stay tuned.
*RAS / Rental Accommodation Scheme (formerly Rent Allowance) figures have not been included since the reply contains no data, but the actual market share of tenancies directly funded by the Government is in reality even greater, as we can see from this 2021 PAC committee information:
HAP and the Rental Accommodation Scheme (RAS) are taken into account, roughly 90,000 households were in receipt of State assistance in 2021, with HAP and RAS between them costing €721m.