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It’s hard to untangle problems like this from supply and demand of housing. Are the hotels in Dublin vacant because everyone prefers AirBnBs? Ie. is tourist lod

It’s hard to untangle problems like this from supply and demand of housing. Are the hotels in Dublin vacant because everyone prefers AirBnBs? Ie. is tourist lodging over or under-supplied? Two straightforward treatments I’d want to see tested: 1. A significant “hotel tax” or “vacancy tax” to make it very expensive to let housing sit idle. Reduce the profitability of tourist rental and units will shift back to local rent. 2. Significantly expand the supply of housing by removing barriers to development. This phenomenon is happening around the world as cities try to keep existing neighborhoods under glass and prevent any change, damning younger generations to have no place to live. Another thing I would love to see is the development of new cities with robust transit connection to the nearby older ones. I don’t know enough about Dublin to be specific, but I do know that across the US one of the things that is happening is a generational trend toward wanting urban living, to the point that many people don’t even consider living in suburban or rural towns. However there’s no reason we can’t build new “urban” cities: places starting with a Main Street, compact walkable design, street grid, designed to organically scale up to a genuine large urban center over time. This was common practice in the 1800s, and we have plenty of models around the world to copy from, we just quit doing this in the car age. Why not bring this back?

purple_ducks 8y ago
> by removing barriers to development That's quite broad. Barriers to development were lowered and ignored during the Celtic tiger era. Really poor housing was built and funnily enough, it was still sold at obnoxiously high prices. The only people pushing for this are property developers and thankfully so far, most of the country has remained strong on not falling for this spiel again. *This doesn't exclude building higher in city center.
- stale2002 8y ago
  Removing barriers to entry does not mean allowing low quality housing to be built. It instead means things like getting rid of building height limits.
  - blang 8y ago
    Piggybacking on this, I believe it would mean things like decreasing "Environmental Review Process" and "Comment Periods" as well as density restrictions.
    - mjevans 8y ago
      Or even doing that as part of an urban development planning review where most of the review and impact is assessed and pre-approved as long as the proposed changes mostly match what was envisioned. Make the actual review and approval more like asking for a variance.
stevenwoo 8y ago
The problem with new towns now versus the 1800's is now all land has an owner in the USA with legal protections, in the 1800's we just took land from the occupants the native Americans - it's sort of like a Platonic ideal to start from scratch but never going to happen without a disruptive event. Europe just got lucky that so much of their cities were pre-automobile age, USA got unlucky in that sense. That sort of brings us back to the Amazon/sports type bidding war with incentives from local government entities.
CalRobert 8y ago
"Another thing I would love to see is the development of new cities with robust transit connection to the nearby older... " Incidentally, this is part of why I'm moving to a house near Tullamore in a couple months. It's 53 minutes by train from Dublin (Heuston) - and yet off the radar of my friends, some of whom spend that much time commuting to work via bus from within Dublin city. For what it's worth I made a site where you can see places for rent and sale and how far they are from job centers via rail (and the schedules) https://www.gaffologist.com https://www.gaffologist.com
Shivetya 8y ago
I would not want to see a vacancy tax however a hotel tax serves its purpose because it targets the use of the property. still i would limit the hotel tax to housing employed for that purpose for a majority of the year. this would let those who summer elsewhere to enjoy the benefits of their home while only hitting those who choose to live elsewhere all the time. the second point you made is a well known issue across the world, it simply comes down to a politically correct version of red lining. the terms are changed to make it palatable but the effect is the same. those in need are forced out, their presence is only desired during work hours to perform work
- Dylan16807 8y ago
  You can summer elsewhere without getting hit by a vacancy tax. A house that's empty most of the year really is making the problem worse, and if they don't want to change then they can pay some money to offset the harm.
- dogma1138 8y ago
  They already pay income tax on the income from the letting and unless you create a company that owns the house it’s very hard to deduct the upkeep costs from your taxes and if you transfer the ownership to a company you lose the property if you want to transfer it to back to yourself it would incur a high tax liability.
- nosuchthing 8y ago
  The vacancy tax is just a limited version of the classic "Land Value tax", which would make sense for popular urban cities but not for suburban or rural areas. The point of the vacancy tax is to prioritize the limited local space for the local population who live and work in the city. Vancouver is implementing a mild version of a vacancy tax to curb the issue with empty houses. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax
sitkack 8y ago
This is the same kind of mental mXXXXXXXXXon that I get at work. supply, demand, not everything is broken down into your simplistic libertarian alegbra.
mgleason_3 8y ago
> It’s hard to untangle problems like this from supply and demand of housing. Well said. And the article makes a mess of it - discussing so many things without actually discussing the causes of homelessness - mental illness, lack of skills, the need for daycare, handicaps, and myriad others. Plus, the big one advocates like to pretend doesn’t exist - drug addiction. Why? Because dealing with the root causes is really hard. So much easier to blame something else. E.g at one point it says there’s a total of 1,400 homeless in Dublin and earlier says “3,165 entire properties listed on Airbnb in Dublin, compared with only 1,329 available for long-term rent“. Since only a small portion of long-term rentals are available at any point in time (the total number of long term rentals could be what - tens of thousands?) one might wonder why those numbers were used or if the guardian has vindetta against Airbnb...but reguardless... If there’s 1,329 available for for long-term, why aren’t they putting the 1400 homeless in them? That would leave only 71 homeless! The rest could go to Airbnb...done. Problem solved. But of course, it’s not solved. And as for why homeless are placed in hotels rather than Airbnb or long-term rentals - its likely because its easier to contact a few large entities (hotels) to arrange lodging than it is to contact 1400 individuals. That and the neighbors might not be to happy.

purple_ducks 8y ago

> by removing barriers to development That's quite broad. Barriers to development were lowered and ignored during the Celtic tiger era. Really poor housing was built and funnily enough, it was still sold at obnoxiously high prices. The only people pushing for this are property developers and thankfully so far, most of the country has remained strong on not falling for this spiel again. *This doesn't exclude building higher in city center.

stale2002 8y ago
Removing barriers to entry does not mean allowing low quality housing to be built. It instead means things like getting rid of building height limits.
- blang 8y ago
  Piggybacking on this, I believe it would mean things like decreasing "Environmental Review Process" and "Comment Periods" as well as density restrictions.
  - mjevans 8y ago
    Or even doing that as part of an urban development planning review where most of the review and impact is assessed and pre-approved as long as the proposed changes mostly match what was envisioned. Make the actual review and approval more like asking for a variance.

stevenwoo 8y ago

The problem with new towns now versus the 1800's is now all land has an owner in the USA with legal protections, in the 1800's we just took land from the occupants the native Americans - it's sort of like a Platonic ideal to start from scratch but never going to happen without a disruptive event. Europe just got lucky that so much of their cities were pre-automobile age, USA got unlucky in that sense. That sort of brings us back to the Amazon/sports type bidding war with incentives from local government entities.

CalRobert 8y ago

"Another thing I would love to see is the development of new cities with robust transit connection to the nearby older... " Incidentally, this is part of why I'm moving to a house near Tullamore in a couple months. It's 53 minutes by train from Dublin (Heuston) - and yet off the radar of my friends, some of whom spend that much time commuting to work via bus from within Dublin city. For what it's worth I made a site where you can see places for rent and sale and how far they are from job centers via rail (and the schedules) https://www.gaffologist.com https://www.gaffologist.com

Shivetya 8y ago

I would not want to see a vacancy tax however a hotel tax serves its purpose because it targets the use of the property. still i would limit the hotel tax to housing employed for that purpose for a majority of the year. this would let those who summer elsewhere to enjoy the benefits of their home while only hitting those who choose to live elsewhere all the time. the second point you made is a well known issue across the world, it simply comes down to a politically correct version of red lining. the terms are changed to make it palatable but the effect is the same. those in need are forced out, their presence is only desired during work hours to perform work

Dylan16807 8y ago
You can summer elsewhere without getting hit by a vacancy tax. A house that's empty most of the year really is making the problem worse, and if they don't want to change then they can pay some money to offset the harm.
dogma1138 8y ago
They already pay income tax on the income from the letting and unless you create a company that owns the house it’s very hard to deduct the upkeep costs from your taxes and if you transfer the ownership to a company you lose the property if you want to transfer it to back to yourself it would incur a high tax liability.
nosuchthing 8y ago
The vacancy tax is just a limited version of the classic "Land Value tax", which would make sense for popular urban cities but not for suburban or rural areas. The point of the vacancy tax is to prioritize the limited local space for the local population who live and work in the city. Vancouver is implementing a mild version of a vacancy tax to curb the issue with empty houses. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax

sitkack 8y ago

This is the same kind of mental mXXXXXXXXXon that I get at work. supply, demand, not everything is broken down into your simplistic libertarian alegbra.

mgleason_3 8y ago

> It’s hard to untangle problems like this from supply and demand of housing. Well said. And the article makes a mess of it - discussing so many things without actually discussing the causes of homelessness - mental illness, lack of skills, the need for daycare, handicaps, and myriad others. Plus, the big one advocates like to pretend doesn’t exist - drug addiction. Why? Because dealing with the root causes is really hard. So much easier to blame something else. E.g at one point it says there’s a total of 1,400 homeless in Dublin and earlier says “3,165 entire properties listed on Airbnb in Dublin, compared with only 1,329 available for long-term rent“. Since only a small portion of long-term rentals are available at any point in time (the total number of long term rentals could be what - tens of thousands?) one might wonder why those numbers were used or if the guardian has vindetta against Airbnb...but reguardless... If there’s 1,329 available for for long-term, why aren’t they putting the 1400 homeless in them? That would leave only 71 homeless! The rest could go to Airbnb...done. Problem solved. But of course, it’s not solved. And as for why homeless are placed in hotels rather than Airbnb or long-term rentals - its likely because its easier to contact a few large entities (hotels) to arrange lodging than it is to contact 1400 individuals. That and the neighbors might not be to happy.