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THE GOVERNMENT’S AFFORDABLE housing scheme has been scrapped under new measures which encourage people to rent their homes.
The new initiative, announced today by Housing Minister Willie Penrose, is a reversal of previous policies which aimed to boost home ownership. Minister Penrose said this had contributed to the housing bubble and subsequent economic crash. “As a society we allowed an obsession with property to run away on us, losing sight of the important things,” he said.
He said some households “do not want or may not ever be in a position to own their home… The development of a vibrant, viable private rented sector is essential.”
The affordable housing scheme aimed to give first-time buyers a foot on the ‘property ladder’ with discounts of up to 40 per cent. However, as property prices have nosedived, the discounts offered have become insignificant in many areas. Last year RTE reported that councils were selling homes marked for affordable housing on the open market, because the potential buyers on the waiting list were not interested.
Another measure will see housing support in the form of the rent supplement scheme transferred to local authorities from the social welfare service. Minister Penrose said this was aimed at reducing the number of households depending on long-term rent supplements. “Rent supplement was designed as a short term income support; it was not intended to meet long term housing needs,” he said.
The Housing Policy Statement, launched by Minister Penrose today at the Housing Practitioners’ conference in Mullingar, also confirms that the Government is preparing to introduce a property tax as a condition of the IMF/EU bailout.
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So his advice is to buy when houses are the most expensive and rent when they are the cheapest in years. This guy’s a genius. Maybe he should put in for the Finance Minister’s job.
His view on shares must be Buy High sell Low.
it looks like cut them and they bleed fianna fail blood
Do you have any record of him saying buy high?
‘Create a vibrant rental Market’… Yeah, so all the greedy knobs will see a killing to be made and start buying up loads of property, bringing us back to square one and the cause of this whole mess
Make up your mind folks! We decried the last government for fuelling the boom in house prices…and now you slate this one for doing something to try to ensure the same doesnt happen again!
I still don’t understand why the various councils / the government in general use the vacant stock in various developments as social housing. IE rent this vacant housing under existing principles rather than let the developments become run down and eventually uninhabitable. And what about rent to buy schemes? Rent properties out and after a set period of time allow applications to buy the property offsetting a portion of the rent paid for those who do wish and have the means to buy their home.
Is that really such an absurd and unworkable idea?
The first sentence should have read:
I don’t understand why [...] DONT use…
Because the other tenants in those developments look at affordable housing and social housing in the same way the KKK look at non-aryans :(
What I don’t fully understand is why are they saying affordable housing scheme became insignificant due to houses prices nosediving out at the market. Whatever the prices are, scheme can be operational in my opinion. For example, house costs 500K, then scheme allows you to buy for say 300K, house costs 150K then scheme allows you to buy for say 100K, etc. Why scheme only works when prices are high, but not low? What a complete rubbish talk unless I am missing something here. To me it looks like decision aimed to help greedy developers wait till prices can pick up again before they start selling again.
spot on
problem is this scheme is only available to first time buyers and only on new property. as most new properties now are unfinished its not really viable
Should have copped something was up when Affordable Housing Schemes were introduced. It stands to reason that everything else was Unaffordable.
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