I read recently that some private company has spent over six hundred million buying up property in Ireland. mostly residential. I can’t help wondering how much of that property will end up being rented by the government for use as social housing. This is something that’s been on my mind since I got my own eviction notice. The house was bought by a company that didn’t exist a few months before they bought the house. There’s a list of companies involved, and it looks like they own each other.

Anyway, because of the housing situation in Dublin, I qualify for a thing called Homeless HAP, basically a higher form of rent subsidy for people at risk of homelessness. Out of curiosity I looked up the cost of a mortgage and discovered that on a one bedroom apartment, the repayments on a mortgage are less than the government currently pay in rent. That’s not to suggest the government should simply buy apartments and hand them over, but if they were to buy apartments, and give people a life interest in them, paying for the upkeep and what-not, it could do a lot of good. Yes, some people would take unfair advantage of the situation, but more would use it as a stepping stone to a better life.

Makes you wonder what’s going on.

I have just over two weeks left, let’s see how it works out.