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EVERYONE NEEDS A home – it is a basic human right. Everyone agrees with that. Yet here we are at the end of 2022, in one of the wealthiest countries in the world, living an unprecedented catastrophe in housing caused by Government policy and private property profiteering (not caused by you millennials).
But as I will show in this article, there is hope in new solutions that can get us out of the crisis.
We need big, bold radical ideas and measures – not tinkering about trying to make the private market ‘work’ when it is inherently dysfunctional. We need a new road map for housing – like Sláinte Care provided a vision and plan for universal access to health care.
2022 will be remembered as a record-breaking year in housing. Highest-ever rents, high house prices, evictions, homelessness, numbers of young adults stuck living with their parents, and forced emigration because of the lack of homes.
And in the midst of this, with the highest-ever level of housing need, new home building starts are falling. Because of inflation and economic uncertainty, the private market is deeming it unviable and unprofitable to build.
What will 2023 bring in housing?
Hold your breath. 2023 will see the housing crisis worsen even further, unless we can raise our voices together and force this Government to change.
The ‘new’ Taoiseach Leo Varadkar says housing is a key priority for him. But using the same failed policies won’t solve housing.
The housing crisis is like a fire raging in a building (our collective building – our society, our country). The Government says: look, things are improving, the fire might be spreading, but we have put out the fire in the corner of one part of the building, aren’t we great.
But until you have a way to put out the whole fire, it will keep burning and ultimately burn the building down. Even worse, the Government has fire engines – in the huge budget surplus and €6bn rainy day fund – waiting to be deployed at some serious fire in the future. This is the fire that is burning down our common home – and burning up our country.
The Government has shown it can be influenced by public pressure. It introduced the temporary eviction ban, despite saying it wouldn’t do it. The large Raise the Roof protest in November has put further pressure on.
The Taoiseach knows there is a large cross-society groundswell of anger, frustration, and demand out there amongst the Irish public for a massive change in housing. If that mood is mobilised and supported in a positive way and turned into a massive social movement with protests on the streets and a Referendum to enshrine the Right to Housing in the Constitution, then there is real hope that things can start to get better in 2023.
There is also hope in the increased delivery of homes by ‘not-for-profit’ housing associations and local authorities that has started in the last two or three years, and the emergence of community led housing.
The starting point in all this is to understand that the housing crisis is a social and economic disaster created by policy. A generation are asking: “What future is there for me in this country?”
There are 450,000 adults living at home with their parents, and many feel like they can’t speak out, because they feel ashamed of being stuck, as if it is their fault. Renters are terrified to complain in case their landlord evicts them. A country where its people cannot get a home is a broken country, a broken society, a broken economy.
The proportion of adults in their 20s still living with their parents is truly shocking. 75% of 20 to 29-year-olds in this country are still living with their parents.
But Government will try gaslight you and say that’s probably the same all over Europe. In fact, it’s way above the EU average of 57%, and in Denmark, just 12% or 1 in 10 of 20 to 29-year-olds are still living with their parents.
And it continues on to people in their 30s: 41% of 25 to 34-year-olds in Ireland live with their parents. It wasn’t like that 10 years ago. In 2012 just 21% of that age group lived at home.
It’s ten times higher than the 4% of 25 to 24-year-olds still living at home with their parents in Denmark. And there are those who can’t go back to their parents or family home, or their parents aren’t alive.
One in 10 of 18 to 24-year-olds experienced hidden homelessness in the last 12 months. Care leavers are very vulnerable to this.
Generation Rent
Then there is Generation Rent. Facing ever higher rents, poor quality housing, landlords failing to do repairs, not able to have pets, or hang a painting. Living with strangers in your 30s and 40s. And living in a perpetual state of insecurity.
We have one of the highest rents in the EU. Rents in Ireland increased by 82% since 2010 compared to just 18% in the EU. In Dublin, rents were €963 a month in 2012, today they are up 108% on that, at €2,011.
A nurse’s take-home salary after tax is €2,196, so it would require their entire take-home pay to pay for the average rent in Dublin. That is why we can’t get nurses to work in our hospitals, childcare workers, or teachers in schools in Dublin and surrounding counties. The housing crisis is affecting the ability of our essential services to function.
Renters are being hammered by multiple cost-of-living rises and it is showing in rising poverty rates among renters. One in five (19.3%) renters went without heating at some point in the last year, compared with one in 20 (4.4%) of homeowners. The general impression is most renters are young single professionals. In fact, 42% of all those living in the private rental sector are families with children. 138,747 households with children are living in the rental sector.
A generation of children are being traumatised by housing insecurity. In the last two and a half years in Dublin – 3,909 families presented as homeless. That means over 8,000 children experienced some aspect of the trauma of home loss and homelessness in Dublin in the last two and a half years.
Eviction ban
Renters are living in fear and anxiety about what will happen when the eviction ban is lifted in March. The RTB was notified of 4,643 eviction notices served by landlords in the last 12 months.
A tsunami of evictions is set to take place if the ban is not extended for at least another 12 months, and in reality it will need to be in place for a number of years until the crisis abates.
Landlords need to understand that their property is a tenant’s home. The eviction ban doesn’t stop landlords leaving the market – they can sell up and leave the tenant in place. Local authorities and housing associations have funding now to buy up such property.
Why isn’t a tenant given the option to buy their home, with support from the Government? Rather than thinking ‘oh no, landlords are leaving the market’, how can we keep them?
It can be a way of remaking our housing system towards one where people are able to buy an affordable home or rent affordably with lifetime security.
Government has also failed to enforce rent regulations effectively – so landlords can evict lower paying tenants and get in higher paying ones relatively easily. This leads to homelessness and brings overall rent up.
Investor funds
Unless, of course you are a global investor fund landlord. And this is an area that Leo Varadkar, the new Taoiseach, will have to reverse policy on, if he is serious about making housing and rents affordable.
Government policy over last decade has been about allowing rents rise to incentivise property investors. The Government has continued to back the investor funds, through the Real Estate Investment Trust tax break, and in allowing new properties to be rented at whatever the investor funds want – setting new market rents and driving rents upwards.
Government trumpets the increase in new housing supply but very little of it is affordable, and in Dublin only a minority of the new build units are actually available for sale.
Investor vampire fund build-to-rent are the main new supply in Dublin – at unaffordable rents. The Dublin housing market has been taken over by non-household purchases –pushing up rents and house prices and blocking home purchases. 60% (2,833 units) of all new build units (4,822) sold in Dublin so far this year were bought by ‘non-households’ (mainly investor funds, but also by local authorities and AHBs as social housing). Just 20% was bought by first time buyers.
House prices will continue to rise –they are already 3% above the levels seen in the height of the Celtic Tiger boom. Where is the policy to reduce house prices, to make house prices affordable?
Housing For All targets the delivery of 33,000 homes per year, but just under a half (14,000) of those are social and affordable, the remainder are market priced (ie unaffordable) homes. This a fundamental flaw.
We need a guaranteed delivery of 15,000 social and 15,000 affordable homes each year, that is 30,000 social and affordable homes to meet the level of real housing need and demand.
Thinking afresh
The way forward is a reimagining of our whole housing model, land, property and finance. We need to make our housing market work to meet housing needs – to provide homes, not investment assets. And alongside that to provide energy efficient sustainable homes for everyone, not just those who can afford it.
It is not socially or environmentally sustainable to allow land and buildings in cities and towns sit vacant and derelict. It requires a new approach to private property ownership -putting society and environmental needs first.
So how should we do it? Start by putting the resources and funding needed into it. The €6bn from the rainy day fund should be allocated to do the following:
Support the not-for profit housing associations and local authorities to bypass the developers and directly contract builders to provide homes immediately on the huge public land we have.
Set up a public construction company that would hire the key trades, such as carpenters plumbers, architects, engineers, that can deliver housing. Through regional offices it would build homes across the country. The workers are there – but we will lose them to emigration and other parts of the economy if the State doesn’t step in now and guarantee employment. It would also refurbish and retrofit housing to meet energy efficiency climate goals.
Create a new form of affordable home ownership in Ireland. I explain in my book, Gaffs – that alongside a huge ramping up of social and affordable cost rental homes, we should develop a New Ireland Homes scheme as a way to actually increase home ownership levels on a sustainable basis. It would be a new public affordable housing that people could buy, and own their own home for life. They could sell it, but only back to the New Ireland Home’s Scheme, a ring- fenced affordable housing market or back to a housing body. If we built 5,000 of these homes per year, all around the country, within twenty years we would have a potential affordable housing market of 100,000 homes being kept affordable on a permanent basis.
Create a new cooperative community led housing sector. Provide legislation, land and finance for cooperative community and self building of green homes. Common Ground in Wicklow and Self Organised Architects have worked up plans for this. Cloughjordan in Tipperary have done it. Young people want to create and live in sustainable communities. They should be supported as part of creating a new cooperative sustainable economy that will be resilient in terms of future economic and climatic shocks.
The issue of vacant and derelict properties remains to be properly tackled. The Census found last year 166,000 vacant homes. 48,387 were long term vacant (vacant in 2016 and 2022). 38,000 were vacant rentals. In contrast, there are just 1,354 properties listed nationally to rent. The government introduced a small vacant property tax that needs to be substantially increased to be effective. Local authorities need to be funded and supported to engage in a huge compulsory purchase, and bring in compulsory sales of vacant and derelict units across the country. These could then be sold to individuals, or a housing association for social and affordable housing.
A clampdown and restriction on short stay lets would be a rapidly effective measure to increase rental supply. Many of these vacant rentals are also being used as short stay accommodation, like Airbnb. There are 16,000 entire homes listed as available on Airbnb across Ireland. In Dublin there are 3,500 entire homes listed. And 40% of all listings are part of multiple property listings indicating these are landlords, not just a person renting out their home. So if we restricted such short-term lettings we could provide an additional 15,000 entire homes – immediately.
To drive this fundamental change in housing we need to put a right to housing in the Constitution. The Housing Commission is due to recommend to Government a wording for a referendum on housing imminently. Holding that referendum is a vital step in having a national conversation about housing, how we treat it, and expressing, what is clearly now a majority view, that housing should be treated as a human right. Having it in the Constitution would give a clear requirement and guide for Government to ensure affordable decent secure housing is in place, and it would strengthen its ability and mandate to take major new initiatives to address housing issues.
Tax the Real Estate Investor Funds, and tax the non-home purchase of property by investor buyers
Freeze rents, and cap new market rents
Extend the eviction ban for two years. Buy up the properties off landlords leaving and enable the tenants to stay in their homes, and offer them to sale to tenants.
So there you are Taoiseach. A number of ideas that you could implement immediately to give relief and hope to Generation Locked Out in 2023 and move us toward solving the housing crisis.
The real cause
Let us not be hoodwinked by nefarious groups blaming immigrants and refugees for the housing crisis.
As I set out here, the real cause of the housing crisis is Government policy abandoning communities and social housing and facilitating the private market squeezing of housing as an investment asset.
Protesting against asylum seekers will not get one house built, in fact it just takes pressure off the Government and misdirects public anger on already traumatised refugees.
I mentioned Denmark earlier as a place where young people can leave and get their own home at an early age. In Denmark, public housing accommodates one million people in more than 8,500 estates owned by 550 different not-for-profit housing associations.
It is financed by borrowing from the Danish Housing Investment Bank (funded by Danish pension funds). There is no income test – everybody is entitled to social housing. In Denmark 30% of its total housing is ‘non-market’ social and affordable. In Ireland it is just 10%.
The Raise the Roof protest in November sent a clear message to Government to change direction in housing, and I believe that is part of why the new Taoiseach said he thinks it is an emergency.
People are standing up and speaking out. Just look at the range of groups acting: from Raise the Roof led by the trade unions and civil society organisations (who really have a vital role in driving the movement), the Home for Good campaign for a Right to Housing Referendum, and tenants’ union CATU is organising and stopping evictions.
Organisations like Focus Ireland, De Paul, Threshold and Simon Communities are doing incredible work to prevent homelessness and support those in homelessness. Artists and musicians are highlighting the crisis. Blindboy has had me on his podcast and live show to set out the causes and solutions and they got a phenomenal response.
At the launches of my book, I’ve been struck by the range of people affected by the crisis, and how they want to take action, and see major change. But most of all the young people, saying they want the change, but are increasingly feeling despair.
People are telling their experience of the housing crisis from renters to those stuck living at home on social media and on my podcast Reboot Republic. The silence and stigma is being broken through.
That is why in 2023 we will need to see Raise the Roof protests in every town and city across the country, and new groups talking and acting on the housing crisis, to make housing a human right.
Everyone affected needs to work together to help us to create a citizen-led, positive, movement for homes for all. That should also include use ‘self-building’ a new future -through cooperative green community led housing.
It is only when you make noise that you will be heard. That is where the hope that can overcome despair comes from.
Through such a movement we can ensure everyone has a home, and done in a way that nurtures a new Ireland with decent jobs, delivering sustainable homes, with real community involvement. Bring on 2023.
Dr Rory Hearne is an Assistant Professor at Maynooth University and the author of Gaffs. He is also the host of the Reboot Republic Podcast.
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No mention of the never worked a day in their life brigade who occupy a fair proportion of the social housing stock without making any sort of contribution to society just like their parents and grandparents who went before them
@David Walsh: I know people where they encourage their children to “claim they are homeless” so they are put on the housing register and get a lovely home without the hassle of a mortgage. I’ve even heard of a women who had a council house and she moved in with her other half and rented the home out.
@David Walsh: I was born and raised in a social, or council house as they were called. All my family work, and own their own homes. You can’t tar every person who was born in a council house as a sponger. The majority of them work hard to purchase homes of their own.
@The Bolt: I specifically mentioned people who never worked a day in their lives. What made you think that applied to you or your family members?
@David Walsh: Believe me, a fair portion of the social housing stock, isn’t occupied by the never worked a day in their life brigade. The majority would work hard to have their own homes. Fully appreciate it wasn’t aimed directly at me.
@The Bolt: Where do they all live so? I supposed they all have mortgages or bought with cash they won in the bookies? Gimme a break ffs
@David Walsh: whaboutery of the worst kind
@Eric Foley: Its reality Eric. Try form a paragraph to counter my point instead of using the word whataboutery to defend the layabout class
@David Walsh: can we see your source for the “occupy a fair proportion of the social housing stock” claim in the original post? What percentage is “a fair proportion” out of interest?
@David Walsh: Journals Leopardstown tips finished 8th, 12th and 3rd(in a very poor race). This is sponsored content(Boyle Sports). It is disgusting The Journal is peddling gambling ads to hit their revenue targets. Gambling advertising should be made illegal especially across media that is accessible by all age groups
@David Walsh: and this government policy will continued as long as they have enough backers like you
@David Walsh: If you don’t want to have a social safety net that also includes those people, then you will have to instead accept even more people living on our streets in poverty, personally I think we have more than enough doing that as it is, even with a social safety net.
Funding a number of people as you described, is the price we pay for having social supports, but its better than the alternative of having shanty towns and wider negative societal impacts, as happens in countries without social supports.
@David Walsh: Maybe you should try and find out just how many people are actually gaming the system . Probably a very small percentage ,the vast majority of people just want somewhere decent to live.
@David Van-Standen: Im all for safety nets but freeloading is totally unacceptable. Freeloaders are the ones who take resources away from those who really need them. They need to be addressed. There is no point writing a long article like this without at least name checking them. The taxpayer knows who they are and is sick of funding their freeloading lifestyle
@Aine O Connor: What percentage of people who never worked a day in their lives do you believe should be entitled to free housing Aine?
@Aileen Lawlor: if you read my original comment you cannot fail to understand that I am not referring to people who work regardless of their income. What I would do with the layabouts is set them a deadline by which if they havent found employment their benefits are reduced and keep reducing them every 6 months until they get the message that the working man ie. taxpayer is not here to fund their layabout lifestyle
@Steve O’Reilly: Where did you hear those makie-uppy rumours Steve – at your local Fine Gael Cumann meeting?
This well thought out and researched article, which is not the first, provides the government with a clear road map out of the housing crisis. Will they adopt it? you betcha they wont, and when SF and other opposition parties promote changes like this, Leo and Co will insist they are living in a fantasy world, always complaining, with no real policies of their own!
@David Walsh: They are all FG members, clubbers by night, keyboard warriors by day.
@David Walsh: You are focusing on the wrong end of the financial spectrum, if you are looking for Freeloaders that are gaming the system at the expense and to the detriment of taxpayers.
But it’s all about constructive misdirection of public anger, the media direct this demonising of the generational unemployment in some areas, that are milking the system for tens of thousands of euros per year, but ignore the people milking the system for tens of millions of euros per year, the difference is that those people are lobbying directly for tax laws that allow them to avoid taxation and syphon money offshore, while also claiming everything they can get their hands on, but the media doesn’t highlight this because it’s deemed acceptable.
Also their address probably gives them some kind of status which serves their interests, rigging the game of life in their favour, while the generationally unemployed have addresses that mark them as undesirable or unemployable, rigging the game of life against them.
@David Walsh: Not just the social housing stock, but the H.A.P. supported private rental too. The latter can guarantee the landlord up to €2000 a month. This has acted as a benchmark for the average rental, pushing thousands of working people out of the private rental sector.
@David Van-Standen: Using the misdirection angle to misdirect, thats an absolute classic. If the article was about millionaires using loopholes to avoid paying tax then I would speak out against that. But its not so less of the misdirection, por favor. The only point I made from the outset was that in a lengthy article about social housing it was neglectful in the extreme to fail to mention that a not insignificant portion of social housing stock is occupied by people who see freeloading as a way of life. And that comes at the expense of the real hard cases who work and pay into the pot but cant draw from the pot when they need it most.
@Eric Foley: You’ve got that empty reply for everything, lol.
@David Walsh: The bottom line is that there isn’t enough social housing to meet our requirements, the fact that some people that live in social housing have never and will never work doesn’t change that or tar the majority of people that need social housing with the same brush, yet this pointless argument is made again and again.
Unless you want to remove access to social supports or exclude the longterm unemployed from society entirely, then this is the best system despite its flaws, but remember if you opt for excluding them, its not just the parents you would be excluding from social housing and other supports, but their children too.
@Aileen Lawlor: Are you deliberately ignoring the point I am making or are you just simple? If someone works but still needs a leg up thats exactly what taxes are for. Its the people who think unemployment is a lifestyle choice that deserve nothing. If you dont pay into the pot then you cant take out of the pot. Its not that difficult a concept
@Angela McCarthy: It is the longest and most niave post I have read here in 8 years and I have worked for many years in all aspects of the construction industry!!
Landlords are not leaving the business for no reason…the number of new landlords coming in to the business is negligible…rents are only rising for new apartments owned by REITS. Supply is the main problem here and politicians and the PRTB are the sole reason for the exodus by private landlords..
It probably took a long time to write this article but it is very niave in its content!!
@Chris Gaffney: Read as far as “EVERYONE NEEDS A home – it is a basic human right. Everyone agrees with that.”
Can’t remember the referendum when we decided that.
@Chris Gaffney: very naive and also how many articles has Rory had to propose his views in the journal this year alone. Let us hear some other perspectives!
@Michael Reilly: Absolutely agree but nothing written after that would provide a single unit. It will take a lot more than airy fairy good wishes!!
@Michael Reilly: tell us you think some people should live in a ditch without saying it.
This is written my somebody that is out of touch with the realities of the situation. I’m a landlord and have had so many bad Irish tenants with no respect for the properties that they are in while the rent is being paid by RAS or the local council are paying 100% of their rent. They don’t want to work or if they do they want to be paid in cash or they will lose all the benefits they receive.
Stopping evictions is only going to make many more landlords sell up.
An option to tax landlords similar to many other European countries ie Portugal 28%, France where 50% or rental income can be written off for repairs and maintenance annually.
What’s built into the Irish psyche is that landlords are bad people. Most landlords are fair people but are being pushed out of the market paying 52% tax
@Observer: I think the problem landlords are the foreign investment and private equity firms who are pricing people out of the market & taking money outta the country. They should be banned as they have been in Canada.
@Mickey Amoko: there needs to be a distinction made between institutional landlords and private landlords. Institutional landlords include foreign pension funds and the red carpet was thrown down for them because they use cash reserves to their own housing development and the Government can point at the number of units delivered. Unfortunately they pay negligible tax, charge the tenant top dollar and given scale can afford to leave units vacant. And then you have small private landlords who provide 87% of rental accommodation who are being forced to sell up as if they were of no consequence.
@Observer: landlords are on the same tax bands as the rest of the working population. I agree that deductions should be allowed for documented repairs. Why on earth should you pay less tax on rental income than I do for my PAYE job? That rental income is paying the mortgage on a property you’ll own outright at some stage.
@Joanne McBride: the landlords increasing equity in the property should be taxed when it is income (the mortgage is fully paid) or when the property is sold. This would be similar to how shares are treated. You pay tax on profit arising from a sale and also tax on dividends which arrives into your bank account as profit. If you’re not making a profit and many landlords aren’t then tax treatment is unfair.
Shelter is a basic human right. Having a home is not.
How on earth is this fraud still getting airtime
Seems to be missing the part where we solve the lack of individuals who are qualified in the trades needed to boost our building capacity.
Some great ideas outlined in the piece but if we are to get the annual build quantity needed then we need trade jobs to be properly paid at apprentice level if we are to get serious traction.
@Mark Nolan: We have the trades. The problem is the trades are working in the private market. If the incentive was there to entice trades to the social housing market, which there isn’t one, the trades would follow. Social housing isn’t being built, so until the government announce that they plan on building, let’s say 10,000 social units, and they need trades to build them, the trades will just continue to work in the private market.
@The Bolt: who do you think is providing all the social housing units to the Housing bodies every year?
@Mark Nolan: You are 100% correct. The only people available to take up any jobs in construction are already working for other firms in construction or are currently living abroad (generally in non-EU companies). I live in Co.Galway and it is a long long time since I heard of anyone leaving school and going to a career in construction which is an industry I have spent nearly 40 years working in!!
@MB: Most of these units are on long term lease. The councils need to build and own the properties. The revenue generated from rents should then be reinvested on more builds. Instead it’s just dead money lining investors pockets.
@The Bolt: I agree we need a better mix of private and social but right now we cannot build quick enough due mostly to a lack of people.
That needs to be solved also and it easily would be if we started apprentice’s on a higher rate and encourage people into a trade career. I have plenty of family in trades and they are always saying they are short of people.
We can walk and chew gum at the same time.
@The Bolt: that’s not correct. Most would imply over 50% when in fact less than 20% of units are leased.
It’s an interesting argument re the long term lease scheme (which I presume you know has been outlawed since 2021).
Just to explain, when the govt leases a property it does so with a significant discount from Market rent. The govt choices are 1) Do we use tax payers money to buy or lease. If the govt decides to buy they can borrow the capital and repay the loan over time.
The govt already has loans of c.€250 billion on its balance sheet.
Many private landlords had been renting their properties short term ie 1 year at a time. The obvious preference has always been to non social tenants , the govt introduced LTL to encourage longterm rental to social tenants.
How on earth is this fraud still getting airtime
@MB: would you rather listen to Harry Potter and the Whiff of Cordite?
Fraud to want our people housed? Do you people even hear yourselves?
State of the comments.
@Eric Foley: Agree especially your own.
I don’t own any vacant properties, but demonising private individuals that do, is a just a new excuse for deflecting from the core issue, the failure by past and present government to build new social housing as an entirely separate social project from the private housing market and to end the policy of alleged reliance on private developers, which never has and never will solve the housing crisis for a very obvious reason, that private development is only about profit and once its no longer profitable, private housing development stops.
The government needs to build new social housing on an ongoing basis, because the housing crisis is getting worse everyday, doing so will also have the knock on effect of freeing up and reducing the cost of both renting and buying private housing.
@David Van-Standen: Don’t demonise them then.. just tax them until they come to their senses
I’m nearly sure the right to a home was in our constitution up until the middle noughties but bertie and his gang removed it. Something changed anyway and can’t find information on it now
@Shaun Gallagher: No such right ever existed in the Irish Constitution.
@Don Hogan: it’s a right in terms of morality, laws and constitutions can be changed at the drop if a miserable hat.
Housing Expert?
Assistant Professor of what??
Here is the true root of the problem
…the solutions of which does not lie in the same approach that caused the multiple problems/issues in the first place……
If Housing Associations were funded to build accommodation designed for elderly people many houses that are too big would be freed up for families.. The accommodation would need to be in the same community , within walking distance of shops, post office ,Church etc . The ideal would be two bedrooms kitchen, sitting room ,a wet room with all the required aids for older people . There are many examples of groups of accommodation like this with a central building where each weekday a main meal is provided for the residents at a low cost. The residents would rent the accommodation for their remaining years thus ensuring a continuous supply for future tenants .
@Aine O Connor: Very prescribed. Do we have a termination date and method? I guess by the time the ‘units’ are ready, we’ll have the option of Soilent Green.
Good to see that the housing crisis isn’t affecting the commentariat of The Journal. I bet your mothers are very proud.
There is no housing crisis in Belgium and the rent is affordable. They offer two types of leases which suits both a small landlord who might need their property back and the institutional or pension funded investors who are in it for the long term.
There are 2 common types of rental agreements in Belgium, based on their length:
Short-term (up to 3 years)
Long-term (3 – 9 years)
2022 also a great year for minority voices….left, right and center. Perhaps if those struggling for a home were better represented as a minority, they could make some progress. But, me fears certain minorities have more rights than others, and the minorities that don’t should be happy with their lot, shut up, and just get on with it.
Build UP. But nicely??
have your say