Sir, – The news that this Government intends to make it even easier for public housing tenants to purchase the houses at discounts of 40 per cent to 60 per cent below the market rate sadly demonstrates, once again, why the nation has a housing crisis and that this Government simply does not understand housing and its importance in society (“Local authority tenants to have greater chance of purchasing homes under rule changes”, News, January 2nd).
Much public housing is located in city and town centres or inner suburbia.
The Government’s ridiculous justification for making it even easier to sell off a valuable public asset is that elderly tenants may have built up a nest-egg they might like to invest.
What the Government is not taking into account is that when they sell off public housing on the cheap, they also sell the valuable land on which the house is built, on the cheap.
Not so much valuable in financial terms (though with the current zoning system, it artificially is) but in strategic terms for providing better public housing options in the future for people, not so far from their workplace.
By not selling off public housing at huge discount, the landbanks on which public housing sits can be maintained for future public use, to perhaps redevelop into higher-density homes in the future, which the Government itself says is the way towns and cities must develop.
City centres will always need affordable accommodation for low-paid workers who provide services on the city centre.
In terms of current housing costs, low-paid now includes doctors, nurses, teachers, gardaí and civil servants as well as shop assistants and hospitality workers.
The valuable land on which public housing sits, and the housing which sits on it, should not be sold off simply to add to some pensioner’s nest-egg, but should be maintained in public ownership to provide options for future governments to build higher density public housing in the future, on the land on which current public housing sits. – Yours, etc,
DAVID DORAN,
Bagenalstown,
Co Carlow.
Sir, – A major reason for the lack of newly built homes available for sale is that local authorities are buying or leasing apartment blocks before they even go on public sale, and branding them as “social housing”. Hence they are competing directly with potential first time buyers and effectively pricing them out of the market. It would be much better if the local authorities got back to building their own houses, which they did very successfully for many years. – Yours, etc,
BATTIE WHITE,
Sandyford,
Dublin 18.