The Blindboy Podcast - How to solve the Housing Crisis

Episode Date: June 9, 2021

I chat with Dr.Rory Hearne. An expert in the policy field of Housing. We speak about the housing crisis, the renting crisis, homelessness. Why we are in this situation and what options exist to solve the crisis Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Your husband is getting his ear pierced and wearing denim jackets. Welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. If you're a brand new listener, you might want to go back to some earlier episodes. That's always what I recommend. And if you are a regular listener, you know the crack. I'm actually a little bit tired. Because I went to the fucking gym today. For the first time in, I'd say, six months.

And you know I've been looking forward to that for so long and it was incredible it was everything I expected it to be I went to the gym it felt amazing to just be leaving my house to have something to do somewhere to go I did a workout on my chest I did some leg stuff I did a workout on my chest, I did some leg stuff, I did a bit of cardio, I stimulated muscles that hadn't been stimulated in a while, it was perfect, it was fucking incredible, I feel brilliant, and like I was hungry at two parts in the day today where I wouldn't normally be hungry, because I was stuck in the loop of quarantine. Like I ate my dinner today and when I ate my dinner it was different to how I ate it yesterday. I had that specific type of hunger where you've earned your dinner, where your

body is asking for whatever nutrients repaired the muscles that I ever so slightly damaged earlier on that day. Now I'm tired at a time that I'm not normally tired. And when I sleep tonight, I'm going to have a different type of sleep than I've had over the past few months. I'm not going to have that lethargic sleep that I have because I've been stuck in my house all day. sleep that I have because I've been stuck in my house all day I'm gonna have a restorative sleep where my body is actively repairing my muscles my brain is gonna give me and is giving me different reward chemicals the reward chemicals I was getting were mainly from social media now I'm getting reward chemicals because I've done a

good thing to my body today so I've basically I've shaken up and shocked my body I've broken the pattern and the endorphins are flying around my head I have those lovely pains that you have in your body after you go to the gym I have more awareness I feel positive I I felt like listening to music today for the first time in a long time just fantastic absolutely brilliant I'm so happy that the gyms are open

again, I had full social distance, I just had a lovely lovely fucking day and I can't wait to go back to the gym tomorrow to do some different exercises it's just I can't believe how excited I am about something I used to completely take for granted it's so wonderful and I'm so fucking grateful and and all this is going to have a knock-on effect with my productivity I've been concerned about my productivity over quarantine and I haven't been my creative output hasn't been what it would

normally be and I'm supposed to be writing a book at the moment but I know when I'm in the gym and I'm in getting listening to music and truly experiencing the present moment joy of exercising and being around other people with safety that's just the type of process where my brain and body can relax to the point that

I start thinking creatively again because the stress isn't in my body when I'm stressed my primary cognitive focus is looking for threats you know looking for threats in the future or thinking about threats in the past but when I'm exercising that's not present I'm enjoying life and when I'm not searching for threats then I'm being creative and I'm having fun so I'm a happy camper today I'm a fucking happy camper and I hope that ye as well look I hope that you you know did you go and get to meet a friend and sit down and have

a drink with him or go to a fucking restaurant Or the Jew get to go to the gym. Because lockdown. Has been slightly lifted in Ireland. After a long time. And I'm just happy for all of us. Because I'm sure everyone had a little moment. The day or the day before. So fair play to us. So I have a special podcast this week.

It is about the housing crisis. And the rent crisis. Okay. And. I'm speaking to an expert. In social policy, Dr. Rory Hearn, who's an assistant professor. And he has spent a huge part of his adult life researching the housing and rent crisis in Ireland. Rory is also a podcaster. He has a podcast himself called Reboot Republic where he speaks to experts

and change makers about housing, inequality, social issues. It's part of an Irish podcast network called Tartyshack.ie which is

like a small, independently run podcast network mainly about politics where really really important conversations happen around politics but Rory's part of that network so ye know that housing and rent and inequality these are issues that I care about and issues I speak about and they're issues that I've done quite a bit of work on. Creative work. Like my BBC series Blind Boy Understrives the World, the first episode of that was about housing.

And myself and a team of investigative journalists looked into the inequality of the housing and rent market in the UK. And we looked into why it's so difficult to get a mortgage why rent is so high we looked at how people are massively exploited within the renting market and we looked at how huge amounts of international criminal cash are laundered in the housing market in London in particular so this is an area that I've been trying to draw attention to for years but I've never really dedicated a podcast episode to it and I've certainly never done a podcast episode about housing and rent with an expert in that area so I want to do it like an act of public service as such to speak with an expert about the housing crisis the crisis, and to do it in a way that is absolutely simple

and understandable. And I'm going to ask the most basic questions such as why is rent so high? Why can't people get a mortgage? What the fuck is a vulture fund? What's private equity, what's neoliberalism, and to have a really in-depth but digestible conversation. And also, what are the fucking solutions? Because you might be thinking, Jesus, Blind Boy, the weather's nice. Do I really, I can't afford my rent. Do I really want to listen to a podcast about that? Well, when I speak to people about these things, I don't believe in doing

something where you're just laying out everything that's wrong it's like here's an expert let's ask what are the solutions also so that we can feel informed and empowered and positive and that we can feel that we can engage in some type of action, some type of positive action. And I'm doing this too as well, because it's in my awareness recently. Because you remember two podcasts ago, where I was speaking about, a newspaper attacked me for speaking about mental health,

and I was trying to point out that I bring experts onto this podcast. And it really made me aware of we have a space we've got a fucking space here with loads of listeners to have the type of conversations important conversations that simply are not happening

in this format on television and radio yes they do speak to people who are experts in policy on TV on TV, on Irish TV and Irish radio about the housing crisis but they don't do it for 90 minutes and usually what they do is they'll bring an expert on, they'll speak for 10 minutes, they have to distill everything down into 10 minutes, the language is often exclusionary, it excludes people and then

when the person speaks they bring someone else on who has an opposing view, then an argument happens and we just want to turn off the TV or turn off the radio and we feel ever more isolated from something that's deeply important so I want to do the opposite of that

I want to fucking speak to an expert I want to have the crack and I want to ask the most basic questions possible. And I want ye to come away from it. Feeling informed and empowered. And also for enough of us to be able to make politicians feel really afraid. For when the politicians come knocking on your door for votes. You understand this deeply

and you can ask them frightening fucking questions that they can't avoid and you'll be able to know because you're informed about this whether they're genuinely engaging with your answer or whether they're talking out of their fucking arse and they

don't want that they'd like to keep us. Misinformed. So that they can pay us lip service. And give us some flowery bullshit. But fuck that. Because this chat is going to show you. That there are actual solutions.

To the housing crisis. To the rent crisis. To homelessness. There are fucking solutions. And it's not as complicated. And as uncontrollable as the government would like us to think it is so here we go enjoy rory harn and you you are a professor in no you're a professor but you're you're lecturing social policy in minute is this correct that's right i am a assistant professor of social policy in Maynooth. Is this correct? That's right. I am a assistant professor of social policy in Maynooth University, lecturing there to the poor students who do social science.

Some of them go off and become social workers, work in policy and rights, become community workers, all sorts of people who give a serious crap about the world and want to work to make it better so they're the sort of students we have and it's great crack so um when i you you came to my attention mainly like i know you're true podcasting and also you had a few articles out recently in the newspaper and one of them it was for the journal and what struck me was just the heading the government does not want you to be able to to buy a home the government does not want you to be able to afford to buy a home and that as a heading just it knocked me for six because it's like well if someone's going to put

that as the headline of an article holy fuck that this person is passionate and you're incredibly passionate to the point that sometimes it makes you deeply emotional about housing in Ireland and when I listen to you and when I read what you're saying I'm just like this person needs to be listened to there's people out there who feel really confused about the housing market the renting market what's happening people confused about their futures and you seem to be very confident about what you're saying so do you want to speak first about your history of housing policy in Ireland and what you've been doing around it academically yeah no and cheers for having me on and i'm delighted to

have the opportunity to be here and to talk to you and uh have huge respect for you know what you've been doing you know in your own way and you know questioning and challenging um back since the austerity years and further and you know putting across i think particularly your focus on mental health and i think is so important because it's interesting um you know housing putting across, I think, particularly your focus on mental health. And I think it's so important because it's interesting. You know, housing, you wouldn't know. So people kind of look at you, you know, you get emotional about housing and then, you know, you stop and think for a second and you go, why shouldn't you? Why shouldn't you?

And because my mental health chat that I'm talking about, I put a lot of that is at the feet of things like policy around housing. It is, of course course you know because like i actually people throw it at me and i'll come back to in a minute just explain my own journey i suppose how it got to this point in terms of housing um and research but like people put it back to me and go oh you're bringing emotion and you know children homeless in hotels growing up and you know young people been stuck at home with their parents till their 40s and others young people going i'm just gonna as we saw on the instagram chat on your question you know when you put up i was coming on

people going you know which country should i emigrate to how do you not get emotional about that how do you not go this is like this is upsetting it's socially devastating it's I think goes back to the people bloody running our country are you know repressed and suffer all sorts of disassociation that they don't uh they don't address and but anyway we'll come back to that. But my journey, yeah, in terms of what I started back in, God, it's almost 20 years ago now. It's hard to believe, getting old. I was studying in Trinity College and I did my PhD in 2003. I started looking at housing.

Of course, that was the height of the Celtic Tiger. The boom was going on. And I was looking at how how at the time, again, something you've talked about before, that whole process of what's called neoliberalism, which is essentially how in the past, back in the, you know, after the Second World War, really, you had what came into being was the Keynesian world order, which was essentially that across Europe and across America in the 50s. You mean Keynes isn't that the economist yeah yeah yeah keynes economist yeah central to that idea in the 1950s 60s 70s was that the state each government in every country accepted that

its core responsibility was to ensure people had housing they built it uh we know in this country they built council housing you know on a scale that was you know nothing like what we do now but you're you know half the population you know we're linked back to someone who was uh you know either bought or was grew up in a council house um and they developed the health service they developed even developed industry you know we huge industry you know run by government to ensure people had and central my my dad was with aerolingus my dad was a government employee yeah exactly in the likes of aerolingus and central to keynes's theory

his economic theory was that if you rely on the market the private sector to provide things like now he went as far as jobs but housing and health education investment in things like jobs investment that you will have massive inequalities rampant inequalities so so just to be clear here so the keen i'm not a bit deep straight away i was yeah i'm trying to keep it as basic as possible so what we're saying here is that like post-world war ii the government which is essentially taxes is like there's going to be industry housing health care and this is going to be bolstered by taxes and this was the favorite approach of an economist called john maynard keynes keynes was keynes was his, that was his idea. His idea, he basically said,

if you look back at the crash of the 20s and 30s, that famous crash prior in between the World War I and World War II, he pointed to that as showing that if you left the market run rampant and if you relied on the market for investment, that your economy will basically go through these constant boom and busts and you will have huge inequality. And so you've got to back it up with the state.

Exactly. The state actually should be the core to ensuring that there's ongoing investment in housing and education. And some people would call that socialism. Some people would call it socialism. It's known better as social democracy. That's kind of the history of what's called social democracy across Europe. Some people would call it socialism. It's known better as social democracy. That's kind of the history of what's called social democracy across Europe. Some people would call it socialism. It was broadly, but he wasn't an anti-capitalist now.

He was very much in favor of a capitalist economy. But his idea was you would have a mixed, the society, the state part would play a really big role within capitalism. And that was his idea. essentially what what happened was you had the likes of then what are called the neoliberals which was milton friedman uh reagan ronald reagan in the states as president and of course margaret thatcher um in the uk they were the ones who came along then in the late 1970s uh and got their new world order in place which was essentially we roll back the state that we get the market in we we get the investors in, we open up finance. This whole digitalization was starting of financial markets. And they started with the whole privatization wave.

So they privatized the transport, they privatized as much public services. And housing was a big one. Housing was at the core. And what's really interesting is that at the time there was housing housing if you think back to what margaret thatcher said what she said was that um the she attacked in particular council housing what we would know as council housing or local authority housing because this idea that it would create it creates lazy people that it creates feckless people what she said is you know everybody should be their own individual that you are reliant on yourself and she's about creating

these everybody becomes a capitalist basically and it was a deeply ideological move it was a deeply um ideological approach it was about essentially um and housing was at its core it was about turning housing into a commodity basically the state should no longer be building this council housing. And we'll come back to the longer term impact. But anyway, the long and the short, I was doing research into things, what were called public-private partnerships in Trinity, not in Trinity,

but which were being done in social housing estates in Dublin at the time, in the 2000s, where the council was selling off the land to private developers because land prices were rising at that time. They said, we're're getting out of social housing so we want to basically privatize this and i started my research looking at that basically and i started to see that hang on a minute there was huge problems here because the private sector was of course trying to maximize profit off the land then of course we had the crash in 2008 and we saw that all these projects collapsed

so i was researching that saw the inequalities i also saw the value of social housing to communities then I started working in a community just 2009 the crash happened a community in Dolphins Barn a social housing community and they were looking for a policy person and someone to support them try and get better conditions for the housing. They offered me a job. I worked there then as a kind of community worker, in a sense, for about six years. Incredible time, incredible community, very difficult. I saw the coal face, the way in which that community, a poor community, was devastated, absolutely devastated by the cuts that happened at that time to community services to welfare supports and and how housing

was so fundamental because the issue they had was poor quality housing it was dampness it was mold it was sewage coming back up in bats and I saw how fundamental housing was to their uh to their lives and then I went started then basically went back to my academic role an academic role in 2013 started uh writing more and more on housing, researching, and ultimately that ended up, I wrote a book in 2020 called Housing Shock, which I suppose set out the Irish housing crisis and how to solve it, set out a kind of vision for Ireland about how we need to change our housing system. But importantly, what I highlighted in that was the whole financialization process, this whole process of investors coming in here uh been invited in by

government buying up when you say investor right is an investor is that what a vulture fund is well yeah it is vulture fund and investor obviously is a word you know lots of people are investors in relation to housing the big kind of shift that happened in between the crash in 2008 2009 and where we are now is that investors in property have changed and yeah the we have the rise of this kind of global vulture fund this real estate fund like that's what i want to ask like so so recently in the media we had this shocking situation where in maynooth there was a housing estate of new houses for i think it was for first-time buyers and a lot of civilians were ready to buy these houses and then

a vulture fund came in and bought them all and the vulture fund will sell that to the rental market how do we get how did we get there? Yeah. That makes a lot of people go, what the fuck? It makes people go, who is a Vulture Fund? How can I stop them? Because people don't know what it is. Yeah, who is a Vulture Fund?

How I can stop them? I love that. They're crazy words. Yeah, it's, how did we get here? I suppose the first thing is that, you know, with the government saying, oh, they were surprised and shocked. How did they end up buying a housing estate? This is shocking. We have to do something about it. Complete nonsense.

Their policies brought us here. Their very policies led us to this situation. You know, I describe it in my book specifically. Is it incompetence or is it deliberate design? That's an interesting. That's a big question. That's an interesting question. I've big question. That's an interesting question. I've debated with a few people

recently about this. I think it's a combination of actual, it's not that they really intended that an estate would be bought up, but what they did do was they went out and after the crash in 2008, 2009, and I kind of highlight that

as a key point, a turning point, the government essentially turned around and they said, OK, if we look back at the response to that crash, the implemented austerity cut, you know, programs, cut spending massively. They put in place things like Job Bridge. Do you know what I mean? Those whole unpaid internships. Yeah. And they told a generation to, you know, emigrate.

Get out of the country. We don't care about you. And I was actually looking at the figures last night. They are shocking when you look. Quarter of a million, quarter of a million young people between 20 and 40 emigrated in those just five years. Sure. Rory, I remember like Horse Outside,

which would have been my biggest song with the Rubber Bandits happened in 2010. And it's like what I'd say to anyone is don't have a big hit during the middle of a recession like that because when we would try and go to do gigs around that song in smaller towns,

there was no young people. Yeah, yeah. And we'd come back six months later and it had halved I just couldn't and me personally

because I was from that generation I was in my 20s when that happened I just can't believe how many people went yeah and then I go to Australia and they're all there

yeah yeah and what's what's really kind of I think interesting I was actually putting a figure, it's the combined population of Waterford City, Cork City and Limerick City

is a quarter of a million people. That's how many were emigrated in those five years. And a lot of them want to come back now, Rory, and they just simply won't because of what the place is like now. Not only can they not come back, but now we've another generation talking about emigrating and i was going and not for lack of jobs not for lack of jobs no but because of the housing situation and the the thing that's enraging about this to me anyway and you know is that

they the policies that they were putting in place at that point in 2010 11 12 first of all austerity was about trying to, you know, basically make up for the massive devastation of the crash, the cuts. So they were putting that cost onto people who did nothing to do with it. And austerity, just to make it,

austerity is basically when you defund a lot of public services and then you make extra taxes for people to pay. Is that correct? Yeah, exactly. And what was happening was essentially it was cutting spending in public services as i said it was also it was cutting wages in the public sector they introduced that thing where you know teachers who are hired after 2011 have

a lower wage you know it's that whole pay inequality thing it was about cutting back and younger people paid that price yeah but at what they were doing i was thinking about if you were 10 years of age back in 2010 your older siblings who were in their early 20s were been forced to emigrate but little did you know when you were 10 years of age that the government was putting in place policies that would then force you to emigrate in 2020 because what they were doing was they said in order to basically get the banks back up and running again they created what's called nama which is the now here's the thing again nama it's another word that we've heard so much that no one really knows what the fuck it is or what

it means what was nama so nama was the national asset management agency set up in 2009 2010 to basically take all the toxic loans so all those loans that had gone pear-shaped that were related to the property market and this could mean someone someone in Cork or someone in Limerick who spent 400 grand on a house and then all of a sudden the crash happens and they don't they can't pay their mortgage anymore so they just throw the keys in the door and it's like what happens to that mortgage yeah that is part of it but even more importantly it's the uh very well played paid um i might say solicitor or doctor who invested in five rental properties and can no longer pay them off or it is the developer uh who um borrowed 250 million off Anglo-Irish to speculate in building...

Shopping centres. Like, there's this giant unbuilt shopping centre in Limerick and it's been derelict for 12 years and they couldn't even get the cranes out of it because the developer couldn't pay off the money that they'd borrowed and it's just this huge eyesore for more than a decade. Exactly. And that happened all over Ireland.

But there was a huge amount of apartments that were built, houses, but also land that was held that was basically linked with loans that were held by the banks. And these loans were called toxic. So basically what the government wanted to do

was get all those bad loans off the Irish banks so our financial system would be able to continue and what they did was they took them all off the old anglo-irish bank got wound up put them into nama almost 70 billion worth of land assets property was put into nama and you would think at that point that you would go 2011 12 you know country you know it's an absolute jock why don't we use this to completely restructure our housing system like we have enough land now this is back in 2012 and a property to provide a housing supply for the next 20 years of this country we could provide affordable housing but no they said no no no no that wouldn't uh get the property interest back again that wouldn't get the uh all the different interests who who benefit from what i call

and you like this term the uh the property real estate finance industry complex do you remember noam chomsky's military industrial complex? Yes. That he talked about who really ran policy in the US was the big military fund. Eisenhower warned about it. One of Eisenhower's last statements that he gave as president was,

he was basically saying the wars of the future aren't going to be created because of conflict. They'll be created because the military industrial complex needs to make money from weapons and therefore they will create wars. And I think you can draw that analogy directly to Ireland and our housing crisis. Our housing crisis.

Which is deeply fucked up. Deeply, deeply. And this is what I think I've been revealing to people and people are just going, what? This isn't like an accident or this isn't some like mistake of policy this is actually policy design that is designed in the favor of certain interests and so anyway back to this and we don't want to think like that the thing is nobody wants to wake up

in the morning and think that their government wants to exploit them you you need to be able to think that the government are there and ultimately they want to help us but if they fuck things up it's because they were trying their best no one wants to go oh shit they're actually designing things against us because they don't give a fuck yeah and they will say they care

they will say they do but if you go back to their policies and this is what I suppose being the social scientist like looking at their policies, and this is what I suppose, being the social scientist, like looking at their policies, looking at its impact, this is what I've been analyzing, you know, for years and years, looking at it, you know, what are they doing and trying to understand why are we in this crisis? What's happening? And I've traced it back. And it does trace back to those decisions where they set up NAMA, then encouraged nama michael noonan was minister

for finance the famous one who met with the the uh the funds invited them in consistently they get set up and what is it just to make again really basic what is a fund okay so a fund is you can have different types of funds vulture funds real estate funds private equity funds they're basically companies that are set up to either basically bring people, people who are wealthy, pension funds. They put all this money into a investment fund. So it's a faceless pile of cash. It's not one person buying property.

It's a faceless pile of cash. Absolutely, yeah. And there's ones, then these companies, these real estate companies operate in different ways. the vulture funds. They operate differently. You can have some vulture funds will come in like, and I won't name them. Why are they called vulture? Why the use of the word vulture? That's a negative, that's a bad word. Because what they do is they come in when property prices are low. They buy up the property as much as they can. And then they basically sell it when the property starts recovering again. So they're basically profiting off and they'll do nothing to that property or else they will come in and they will buy up the property. They'll kick out the tenants and they'll try and get higher paying in

tenants they're vultures in that they're feeding off carcasses the car is nama is nama a carcass nama wasn't the carcass we were the carcass generation austerity generation the the homeowners who went into mortgage arrears the tenants who've been evicted, generation rent are the carcass that these vultures have been feeding off and our government have facilitated them to do that and in terms of Okay, so NAM is like the

funeral, like the pallbearer who takes the carcass and puts it on the mountain for the vultures to peck at Yes, exactly NAM is the deliverer of the carcass onto the mountaintop. And our government was standing there telling Nama,

deliver the carcass up there so the vultures will fly in here. They'll clean it up for us and we'll get back to business as usual and it'll be all happy days. And we'll say ostensibly we care about that carcass, but we really don't

if you actually boil it down. Because how could you claim to care about a carcass, about a people, a generation, quarter of a million forced to emigrate? Because this is the thing here, Rory, because we're in 21, 2021 now,

and now we're going to be looking at adults, people of 18 years of age who have grown up in things like emergency accommodation, in continual temporary accommodation. Yeah, yeah. And like there's thousands of children. I calculate, again, there's no official figures calculated in this, but me putting together the figures, looking at Focus Ireland to count how many people, families are made homeless every month. I reckon in the region of 15,000 children were made homeless over the last eight years and their families.

15,000 children. And within that, Rory, what does homelessness mean there? Does that mean they're living on the streets or does living in emergency accommodation, is that considered homeless? Yeah, it is. So that is someone who is basically uh either forced to you know evicted from a private rental accommodation most of them are coming from most families been made homeless and children are coming from the private rental sector because the landlord is deciding to sell or receivers have been appointed to the property um and they are essentially then they

arrive at the local authority and the local authority then allocates them emergency accommodation so there are people who are who are in either hotels you know bmbs uh these so-called family hubs um and we know and the research again that i've done on this shows that any length of time particularly after a couple of weeks of children and families in emergency accommodation is devastating to children. It leaves long term impacts. And when you talk about emotions and it's something like I was, you know, I've looked at research and I'm linked up with people in the health sector as well around this. You know, there's children presenting to Temple Street Hospital with burns on their skins because they're in hotel rooms where the kettle, where they pull the kettle down on themselves

because the family has no space. There's children trying to study to get a leave insert in a hotel room. There's mothers who have died by suicide because they felt they failed their children because they were homeless and couldn't find them a home. Now, if you don't get upset over that, there is something wrong with you. And couldn't find them a home. Now if you don't get upset over that. There is something wrong with you.

And I think there's something wrong. With our political system. And our society. That we don't get upset by this. And I know a lot of people do. So I'm not actually blaming people. But our goal is that we accept this as normal. That we accept this as okay.

And the. Can I make one point there. Just because I'm aware aware of my some of my listeners aren't from ireland the system you're describing there is emergency accommodation where basically uh people who are homeless are put into hotels and then to take it back to the comment you made earlier about this being an industrial complex an industrial complex emergency accommodation is very profitable for hotels it's a for profit system it is

and it's hugely problematic as well because you know hotels are making money from it we know there's private operators making money from it it's like direct provision so if you have a system where there are companies who can actually fucking profit from a supposed solution then what's the incentive to solve it because a lot of people are making money from it yeah and i think that's a really important point and at ones that need one that needs to be very fucked up it is it's very

it's deeply disturbing deeply disturbing and i think when you look at homelessness right finland we talk about internationally finland we talk about internationally finland has solved homelessness effectively they have a plan to completely eliminate and they include people who are couch surfing and people who are um what they call hidden homelessness in their homelessness figures which we don't include and they're solving it because they've done that too big often what i find that's really useful when it comes to conversations like this rory is like you know you're laying out everything that's wrong and

everyone's listening and going holy fuck this is bad and often what's really helpful in these situations is when someone like yourself goes here's an example of somewhere else that's doing it better so who's doing it better what would who would you look at in the world and say here's a model

for housing homelessness the renting crisis let's look at this the world and say here's a model for housing homelessness the renting crisis let's look at this model and try that because it's working there like we do with drugs in portugal yeah i think it's it's really interesting because if you look at countries like finland and which i just named there yeah they as i said are one of the few countries because this isn't just an irish problem this is a global problem and it's part of a wider shift, as other countries have done, like the States in Australia as well. New Zealand, you know, even the Netherlands, the UK, they have all made this shift over the last 30 years away from the state building council, social housing to relying on the market and turning housing into an investment commodity. Is this also why we're seeing the rise of the one percent where we're seeing growing inequality around the world in western countries? Well it's directly linked to it because if you go

back to the investment funds when you were asking me what are the funds the investment the funds are essentially in many ways the wealth of the 1% gathered together and then funneled into areas where they can maximize the return on those investments. And property has become, which we call our homes, has become the most attractive area for investment for wealth funds and the wealthy globally. Because the economy is up and down. It's not given the same return, but property now. Because the economy is up and down. It's not given the same return, but property now, and in particular, rental property,

is becoming the growing area of, and this is what I highlight in my book. This is a trend that's been going on over the last five or six years, even a decade, where rental property, this whole bill to renting, and that's what the government turned to. They turned to these global investment funds to provide permanent, unaffordable rental housing and that's why when they say about manute oh what happened with manute you're you said you have a tax called a

real estate investment trust tax set up in 2012 and 13 so they don't pay hardly any tax so we invite them in rents have increased by almost 100 in the last decade in this country. There was numerous calls from myself and others to cap rents during 2015, 16, 17. The government never did it. And they actually said in the Dáil, we're not doing this because we're actually, we would be worried that we would turn off investors from coming in here. They actually handled... And why did they want to? Vulture funds aren't making jobs. Because basically what happened at the period of during the crash, post-crash austerity, then initially they wanted to, as I said,

offload all the loans, toxic loans, off to these investors to get our economy back going again. But then what happened was they did realize from 2013 onwards, as the economy was returning, that there would be a housing issue. They realized then there was an emerging housing supply issue. The Irish construction sector finance was broken. And so they said, oh, these investment funds.

And they were convinced by them. They were wooed by them. That this whole built to rent thing, this would be great. Sure, aren't we moving to a rental? They were sold some bullshit by some powerful lobbyists. Exactly. Absolutely. Kennedy Wilson was in there.

They said explicitly they went in there and told them them don't put in place rent caps because that'll deter our investment and they basically turn handed generation rent they handed you in your 20s and 30s and all coming behind you over to investment funds as a permanent asset to be squeezed from and this is where this bull where they go on about oh but sure you know people want to rent now you know we're becoming a european country or like you know the the continental countries like germany where they've you know everybody rents you're going yeah but we don't have affordable rental here and we don't have secure rental you can't put a picture there don't think about rent they don't think about it it's just a thing they do but it's here it rent is

the only thing people think about because they have to yeah and we have social housing rental which is actually affordable but what we don't have is private rental that's affordable secure you know people rental you can't even have a bloody pet in they can't put a bike outside their door in apartment complexes families can't live there so it's it's nonsense saying oh well you know it's okay people are renting now but you're going but that's and that's why people want to own because they can't get secure affordable uh rental and they essentially want to own because their mortgage will be half the price like any house any any housing estate in ireland any housing estate in ireland you can have someone who has a mortgage and their mortgage is 75 percent less

than their next door neighbor who's renting yeah and and it's just like it's shocking and and people say oh well the the solution is you know you allow people borrow more but if you allow people borrow more that will get us back to the Celtic tiger problem. Yeah. What you do is what they won't do, which is the investment funds have changed our Irish housing market. It's no longer the case that someone wanting to buy a home or rent a home can go into the housing market and try and compete with others who are trying to buy a home and have some sort of level playing field. You now have these giant funds who have trillions of a war chest to buy a home and have some sort of level playing field you now have these giant funds who have trillions of a war chest to buy a property and you can't compete against them no and the government's measures that they brought and that's what happened in minute that's what happened in minute exactly and the government's measures that they brought in as a response were just farcical the fact they

excluded apartments you know apartments are homes apartments are what investors want and of course what happened to the the irs reit which is one of the the real estate investment trusts who own or ireland's biggest landlord now private landlord yeah what happened their share is the next day after the government introduced its policies the share price went up because they knew that this is a green light for us to keep buying up apartments, keep building build to rent apartments. Gonna pause briefly there now

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podcasts because the podcasting space is starting to become overtaken with big money corporate podcasts so leaving reviews and talking about podcasts via word of mouth and sharing podcasts on social media this is a great way to help any independent podcast yart a new systematic order is emerging basically and not just in ireland where large piles of faceless cash that are invested in by the wealthiest of the wealthy are trying to create an entire generation where you're just working to rent. Government policy created the generation rent and then the vulture funds are basically feeding off them. And the problem is that unless you dramatically change that

and quickly, this becomes permanent. Because when do people escape? When do they get out? And that's why I was so annoyed with government policy not taking this opportunity when clearly the public are saying, stop the investment funds. We want houses or homes. How do you stop the investment funds? You very simply do what Germany did. You ban them. You say they can't actually buy new property and we don't want them. If're going to rent out they have to rent at affordable rates you put in place measures like you for example you the starting place is you make um

buying property renting property by them less financially attractive to them so why are they so attracted to Ireland they're attracted to Ireland because there's a housing shortage because the, and actually a really interesting one. One of the investment funds said explicitly last year, what was the biggest threat to their investment model? It was the government. They said if the government built affordable housing, our investment model would no longer work. So you're going, so the reason they come in here is because there's no there's people have no choice but to rent these really crazy expensive units that's yeah you know that's so that's what they're that's why they're coming in here and how you stop them then is you build affordable housing on a massive scale

you control rents you put in place security of tenure so so let's talk about finland then because we were going to mention yeah sorry sorry what's finland doing that are they they're so shit hot that we we should aspire to well what they do so finland are a great example in terms of homelessness how they've stopped and ended homelessness vienna is a very in austria that's a big statement that's a big statement finland have ended homelessness. They haven't completely ended it, but they've dramatically reduced it. And what they have is they have a plan

to eliminate homelessness in four years' time. So they have a very clear plan. What they've done is a number of things. Number one is they built social housing. That was a really key thing.

They built social housing and they also had a dedicated not-for-profit company set up to build and uh provide housing for homeless people so they went at it saying it's not the homeless people's fault that they're homeless it's our housing system and obviously other issues in some cases in terms of health supports and that sort of thing but fundamentally it's a housing reason people are homeless whereas in this country there's a whole argument about fundamentally it's a housing reason people are homeless whereas

in this country there's a whole argument about ah it's people's fault and stuff they did in the past and you know we've had that from the highest level said here but finland said no we take what's called an actual housing first approach we get people into secure housing and that's what they've done and they've targeted them and so they allocate a certain amount of their housing for homeless families for homeless individuals and they have radically reduced their level of homelessness. They also measure who is potentially becoming homeless in terms of hidden homelessness, in terms of people couch surfing and people coming out of prisons, for example. People. So they have a whole system in place where they're monitoring who is potentially becoming homeless. How are we set up for them? They work with people then who take up the housing they support them to keep them in their tenancy

and they go after it and ultimately they had a plan and a vision and a commitment a political commitment to end homelessness and they're on the way to do it so that's what's so special about the government that what like why that to me sounds like a compassionate approach a compassionate and a critical and uh a sensible approach what what's so special about the government of finland that the government of ireland don't do it did the voters do this or is it just the government of finland well that's a good question i think that the clearly as a society in finland they they do look at housing differently than how we look at it here or how we have looked at it up to this point which is housing is seen as a human right housing is seen as a fundamental need which it is of course for shelter and they prioritize that

within policy actually the right to housing is in the constitution in finland as well which of course it isn't here so there's there's an institutional there's a societal commitment and desire and they've discussed it they had a homelessness crisis and they decided to go tackle it and it would have been pressure from public pressure from ngos and the agreement of government that we want to do this and they went after it and they had a good idea and they went for it and they were committed to it. Whereas here, what we have is a homelessness is part of a much wider housing crisis. We still have a question where we don't have a right to housing in our constitution. Our last national housing plan called Rebuilding Ireland, which was the government's vision from 2016 to 2021 did not mention the right to housing once our

predominant approach to housing here is it has been treated as an investment asset and i think that for me this is the big hope for and i know in your um the questions on instagram there was a number of questions about where is the hope you know what's the hope for change and for me the hope for change is the value shift that i think is underway amongst generation rent and generation what i call stuck at home because actually there's about 350 000 young adults who aren't renting they're stuck at home as well living with their parents but there's a value shift underway which is in the celtic tiger years everyone was told to go buy a house who had a bit of money you know everyone become yeah there was the whole idea of you know everyone watching the value of their property and about 26 was the age

26 was the age that you kind of wanted to start getting a house in the celtic tiger which is insane now insane but it wasn't just about getting houses this idea of getting on a property ladder yes it's a property ladder oh yeah which that that that means investment that means you're you're not just getting home here you're moving and shaking you that means investment that means you're you're not just getting home here you're moving and shaking you're flipping it exactly and you're thinking about what is the value i'm adding to this one you know what and then my second home what and maybe i'll buy another home you know and and rent that out and people were encouraged normal people middle class people were told buy a rental property they were given loans to do it the buy to lets the the

rental property everyone was becoming an investor and there was a tax incentive there was it too wasn't it yeah there was a tax incentive but i think the big shift that's happened since the crash is people have learned a very harsh lesson when you treat housing as an investment commodity as an asset you can get burned people will lose their homes and i think what's really changing now is and i think where the government have got it wrong, is that they think in their policies over the last 10 years

that getting property prices back up again, everyone, the middle class would be happy with that and all their voter base would be delighted. What they didn't think about and what they didn't count for is that those middle class people in their 50s and 60s have kids living with them who can't, are priced out of a house.

And I think the big shift is coming that people no longer see housing as an investment asset and a commodity. And they go, actually, what's needed is house prices to fall. Yeah. And if I said that, you know, on national media, they go, what, what?

You want house prices to fall? How could you have house prices fall? How could you have rents falling? But we need that to happen. And people will accept that because they'll go, my kids then will actually be able to get affordable house. The vibe that people are at now, Rory,

just people listening to my podcast and the vibe that I get is people simply, they just, so many people are unable to pursue a sense of meaning in their life, whether it be their career their hobbies there's people who are not in in the career they want to be because to be in the career they want to be would mean taking the type of risk and that risk means they can't afford rent so there's a load of people just going i simply can't live the life that i would like to live

because everything is dominated by whether i can make the rent each month. So people just want... I will accept anything that just lets me not have to worry about this rent so I can focus on me and being a person and trying to find out who the fuck I am.

You can't find out who you are if all you're thinking about is making that extortionate rent every month. You can't take risks. It's so... You can't go back to college. You can't, you know, someone in their 30s who goes, you know what? I spent, I've been an accountant since I was 23.

I don't like this. I think I might want to pursue the arts. I'll go back to college. No one's fucking doing that because there's too much risk. Yeah. How are you going to get money for rent if you're in college? You can't take risk anymore. It's so true and i have been contacted by so many people over the last two months like thousands of people who've told me these stories about you know people who do music who yeah can't

do it because they can't live you know they just as you say they're dominated by thinking how do i get rent how do i cover the rent of course they can't live in a city where they want to you know in terms of culture and music and all this which of course yeah makes a farce of our whole you know we are the country that supports you know the arts and supports yeah you support the arts but you won't actually no bloody artist can afford to live in this country yeah well well even with my own career rory like i i would have a better career i would have a more successful career if it didn't mean like the only way i was able to do my thing for the past 10 years is if i lived in limerick because limerick was one of the few places that that during up until 2017 2018 limerick did not

experience extortionate rents so limerick was the only place i could live where i could afford rent and still earn the shitty money you earn as an artist yeah but i should have been living in dublin i should have been living in in london yeah i should have been or in america where you get opportunities yeah but instead it's like i have to compromise massively and say i can live here in limerick and i can afford it while still doing the odd gig and that's the only alternative i have because if i want to go to london where i should be i better have someone fucking financing me i better have rich parents paying for that that rent it is dublin yeah it is really interesting obviously you've you know made an incredible job at it at it from limerick and it shows it actually shows that you know bu

and limerick and cork and waterford and tullamore and carricature in buncrannan you know you can do it now as well but it doesn't take away from the reality that there are the big opportunities in the big cities and i missed a lot of opportunities that's what i'm saying i missed a shit ton of opportunities and conversations and meeting people because the only way i could do this career was to stay in limerick yeah and think of that potential as you talk about that human potential of so many people and as you talked about education absolutely going back to education it's a simple question what would you be doing if you didn't have to worry about rent as much as you do and you can imagine that as imagine asking that question to everyone under a certain age in

ireland what would you be doing if rent wasn't the only thing you're worried about? Do you know what you probably wouldn't be doing? You wouldn't be working a shitty job that you didn't like. Yeah. You would probably be doing something meaningful to you. And, you know, it was a point I made earlier on. And it is something that's behind all the, when you pare it back, the ideology of the market and housing

and government's attitude towards housing and that that perspective that market view is that if you have countries that provide you know huge amount of affordable public housing you know people are lazy they won't you know they won't they won't take up these crap jobs and you go well actually that's a good thing it's a good thing if people can actually fulfill their potential if they can follow their dreams if they can you know that's a good thing. It's a good thing if people can actually fulfill their potential, if they can follow their dreams, if they can, you know, that's what we should be supporting, you know, and also, and it's not just that, it's bus drivers, it's cleaners, it's, you know, people on lower wages. How do they survive? How do they live in cities?

We're destroying communities, destroying any potential in towns and cities, and again, forcing people to emigrate. And this, I am absolutely determined that I am going to try and do everything I can to stop another generation being forced to leave this country, this time because of affordable housing. And I think that we are at a point, and I feel this genuinely, that generation rent, generation stuck at home,

that generation out there, they can make a massive difference they're making it already you know we can see it in terms of the noise been made around this the last month housing is shot back up to the number one political issue but those stories when we think back to and i've talked about this when you think back to repeal and you think back to marriage equality what were the changes what was the real things that made the changes at that time it was people's personal stories it was their experiences and it's funny how similar the housing crisis is to those issues in a way there is shame about the

housing crisis there is people have shame and they feel stigmatized they feel personal failure because of their housing situation they shouldn't and we need to start talking about this yeah and like there's there's people in their there's people in their 30s who are looking at we'll say what what it meant to be in your 30s 20 years ago and then are comparing themselves to that and feeling like utter shit like even something i noticed which is really strange i still get phone calls from uh we'll say uh some current affair talk show and they'll ring me up and they'll go blind boy will you come on and will you talk about issues affecting young people and then i'll say to them you know i'm in my mid-30s yeah and they're like yeah yeah and and for a while i thought maybe because of a bag on my head they

think blind boy is just in his 20s forever yeah and then i realized no what society has had to do is redefine what a young person is so now if you're in your 30s you're considered a young person and that to me is wrong it's because people people in their 30s are being forced to behave and live to the standards that people in their late teens and 20s were 20 years ago. And now we're calling people in their 30s young people.

It's like, they're not. This used to be middle-aged. Yeah, and you're so right. What you said there, this is wrong. And I think that is one of the most powerful statements that I have tried to get across and make that this is wrong. This is unacceptable. And this is this idea I think they were challenging is that somehow this is just, you know, we should just get along with it. You know, you should just accept it no this and the counter point that runs parallel to that idea that this is wrong is that there's an alternative way of doing it is that actually we can solve it and we can that's one of the reasons i have you on here now rory because so a lot of people speak

about why don't you protest and then some people will say it's so confusing i'm not really sure what i should be protesting against yeah or even not even protest some people say what policies policies should i look for it's so confusing i'm not sure it's like remember the water protests in 2015 yeah and how passionate people got i think a part of that reason is that it was really obvious what are you protesting against water's free and they're trying to make it not free ok I'm going to protest

but with this it's much more complex it's like what does NAMA mean what's a vulture fund what's a cuckoo fund I don't know everything's just shit but I can't see what that thing is that i'm supposed to be angry about and this is what makes it difficult to have vision and focus and determination and what you want yeah you're right and it is more

confusing than just the water charges it is more complex and i suppose what i have tried to do and really really worked hard was to try and communicate a number of ideas that are solutions that people could connect with and go yeah okay i can see that would actually fix it and i think that's why i'm probably rattling a few cages at the moment. You fucking certainly are. I'm going to ask a question now, which is from a political point of view. So from a democratic perspective, look, each individual party is going to have housing policies. Now, I don't want you to. I never recommend.

I never tell people who to vote for. I just simply don't do that. I think it's irresponsible but from your perspective which political parties in ireland have got policies that you think are positive and policies that you think are negative without kind of saying we're not telling anyone to vote for anyone yeah i i think that the way i would put it is i think the starting point for me right now where we're at right now is about when you asked me and said people are confused. The starting point, I feel, is we need to get generation rent, generation stuck at home, people who are worried about this, concerned about it, agreeing around a set of policies that we want. And then we take that to the political classes and political system. Is one of these policies housing should be a human right in the Constitution?

Absolutely. That is number one. There's a number of them. And if you don't mind, give me a second. List them out. Go for it. Take a few of them, because I really think this is important that we do see that there are solutions. I think the starting point is your vision. Where do you want to be? Where do we want to see the Irish housing system in 10 years, in 20 years' time?

And what I want to see, and my vision for this country, is that every single person is in a home that's affordable, that's decent standard, and that they're secure. They're not worried about being evicted from. It could be owned, it could be rented.

And that's the predominant way our housing should be. So we don't, and I'll be straight up, that is your housing system. You're not thinking, oh, what investors are there? What bill to rent is there? What office student accommodation is there? What you're thinking is, that's your starting point, your vision. And that's sustainable, that we're building communities. And if that's where you want to get to, your starting point has to be that's sustainable that we build in communities and if that's where you want to get to your starting point has to be your policy has to be built around the right to housing what is the right to housing the right to housing is is set out by the united nations it's internationally agreed it's these ideas someone has already done the work it's all done it's all there it's and even funnier thing is the irish government has signed up to

international treaties which which included. But the problem is they're not legally binding. But so we need to put it in our constitution. Article 43 of our constitution. And that requires a referendum. That requires a referendum. And actually, interestingly, we just had Fianna Fáil senators propose the referendum with good wording in it in the Sianad on Friday. And that appears to have passed so it

appears that we have a growing political consensus for this referendum but it needs to happen very very very soon um because we need that obligation to be put on whatever government is there that they have a responsibility to solve this crisis right to housing also for example we just saw with the covid restrictions being lifted um that they had to lift the eviction ban they had to lift the rent freeze which has meant renters are back in secure again why did they have to do that because of landlords right to private property so that needs to be changed we need to get back protection so hold on a second so so we don't have in the constitution for for housing to be a right but landlords do have a right to private property.

Absolutely, yeah. And is that in our Constitution? That is in our Constitution, Article 43. Why is that? Is that some fucking formation of the state, scared of the Brits, they'll take our potatoes? Yes, it goes back to that. And of course, the irony of it now being used

to exploit our own population is deeply uh but there is a there is a qualifying um article within that that article 43 which says that that right to private property can be um limited according to what's called the common good but the problem is that common good has not been defined in terms of how do you define that yeah how do you find that and everything we can see right now, the level of homelessness, what's happening to children, the mental health crisis,

none of this is serving the common good. It's serving the common bad. It is. And what I'm really worried about, and I set this out in my book, and I've talked about it a lot on my podcast on Reboot Republic, is I think we're heading to a dystopia a dystopia of permanent unaffordable housing of young people having to emigrate again of soulless built to rent

apartments soulless you know towns and cities packed with airbnb not building communities so you have the right to housing the second thing is then how do you get affordable housing you get affordable housing by the state building it and i think that's the big shift and state as in it it's you like why won't the state build council houses why won't that why aren't they doing that and that's ideology it's ideology and they want to protect the market like i saw just like i've heard leo say before that oh, what do you want council estates for? Sure, aren't they shit? Yeah, that's a paraphrase. But that was a general paraphrase of what he was saying is that when someone asked him why not build social housing, he gave a very classist opinion about what council estates are.

And why would you want to recreate that? He did. And this, though, is there's two two points to that. One is that it is classist and it is ideologically biased against social housing. It's a Thatcherite view of, you know, that's a collective, that's, you know, people should pull themselves up

by their bootstraps, you know, ignores all the inequalities and reasons why people require support for housing. But the other side of it is that in actual fact, what I'm talking about and a solution, I think what we should demand.

And this is this key idea, the new vision for housing is public housing, no longer like council housing just for those on low incomes. But like they do in Vienna, in Austria, anybody can get public housing. And one of your commentators, one of the people asking questions on Instagram, referred to as universal public housing. That's what we need. And you build it. And the Brits tried to do that for a while. The Barbican estate in London was initially, it was an estate for literally anybody. It had nothing to do with your income.

Here's public housing for anybody. Yeah. And it's an obvious, like, why aren't we renting, building? Why aren't local authorities? Okay. And it comes back to, we have loads of ways to do this right now. So NAMA could be doing it.

Like, look, NAMA has the ability to build 70,000 houses over the next three years. It has the land. It has the money. And do you know what it's doing at the moment? It's selling them to bloody investors. Our own state. Like, Roy, that doesn't make...

What angers me about that is, like, I can't even understand how a government can do that. It's like, why do you want all the young people gone out of the... Why do you want a dystopia? You know what I mean? Like, if NAMA can do this,

if NAMA can actually solve the problem right now and keep young people in the country, like, why do they want to do this? Why do they want to set everything on fire? Well, again, there's a number of responses to that. One is that we have historically, and I talked about this, sacrificed generation after generation.

That's part of our culture. It's part of our political culture. And you go back even further to the famine when we had ruling classes who were Catholic and Protestant in this country, big rich landowners

who were happy and saw this explicitly., big rich landowners who are happy for and saw this explicitly, and we saw it recently in RT, it had a great documentary on it, that they were happy for the poor to be evicted. They used the famine to evict the poor off the land so that they could get large land ownings. We have an ability to turn

a blind eye. Look at what's happened in the Magdalene institutions. We have an ability, a ruling... Direct provision. Direct provision, homelessness, the generation's been forced to emigration. There is a deeply disturbing culture of an ability to sacrifice groups in Irish society to keep

the status quo in place. And that is why I hope Generation Rent are the generation who brought us marriage, who brought us repeal, who actually say, no, we're ending. We're actually going to make a historical break in this country and say no longer are we going to allow groups to be sacrificed for a status quo of privilege to continue. But we're actually going to change things properly and stay. And coming back to the, you know, you asked how do they and why do they? I think it is a mix of that cultural thing of of that ability i think

it's it's actually now because you know in the modern day i think there's an element there's a problem with our politicians who are disassociated who are repressed who actually can't relate empathetic to people to other people i think there's a problem of empathy basic empathy and i think that it is they're captured by investor interests the kennedy Wilsons, the Lone Stars, the Real Estate Investment Trust. That's who they listen to. Is there an argument there? Now, this is this is I don't want to become a dad on Facebook, but some people say that like our politicians are wooed by these large, powerful investment funds because after their political career, they may end up getting jobs on the boards of these things. I don't know.

Now, that's very fucking Facebook comedy logic. It is a bit conspiratorial, but I think, you know, you can look at evidences there. You look at Brian Hayes, for example, the former Fianna Fáil minister who is now working for the banking system. There are examples of that.

For me, it's more that they believe in the same ideology of the market. It is that they see them as the interests they are working for. They're the circles they move in. And they're disconnected from the reality of ordinary people. That's what I actually feel. And another thing, again, just to take it a little bit Facebook commenty, but people often comment that a huge proportion of irish politicians are landlords themselves yeah i think the figures are about a quarter of tds are landlords and if you look at the political parties which have the most number

of landlords it is finna gail as far as i'm aware landlords and land owners um and then finna fall as far as i'm aware i don't have the exact figures to me. But yeah, a significant proportion of policymakers are landlords. And you can't... Should that not deeply concern us? It should. It should. But I think it reflects, to me in certain...

It reflects the lack of diversity, lack of representation in our politics in that way. And it is deeply concerning but i think what's more concerning is the decisions that they're making to prioritize these investors and their willingness to accept the social cost and there is incompetence as well though i don't think they understand this i don't think they understand it i don't think i'm sure you've you've spoken to a lot of politicians in in your time and sometimes and as have i and sometimes you're like how the fuck do you tie your shoelaces

but you know what i mean it's it's sometimes you meet someone who's who has real power and on a conversational level they're just very naive like i wouldn't trust this person with a trouser press but yet they have power yeah the problem is our politics still promotes this local, often popularity contest or people who are, you know, their family. Or nepotism. Nepotism, their parents were TDs or councillors. And that it's only recently we're seeing in more of the, I think, you know, the parties like Social Democrats, Sinn Féin, the others who are promoting people who have an expertise. You know, you look at Eoin O'Brien, you can't deny his expertise on housing. You look at, you know, Kino Callaghan, for example, the Social Democrat

spokesperson as well on housing. You know, there are people who've studied, you know, who've researched this. There are increasingly experts in areas, it's still you know it's still the problem is politics uh promotes popularity contests and as you say nepotism and doesn't promote expertise necessarily um and that is an issue but i think more broadly that what's needed and you you asked me you know which policies and i you know i think that as i said the state needs to build and the other thing what it needs to do is it needs to get back to cooperatives you know, I think that, as I said, the state needs to build. And the other thing what it needs to do is it needs to get back to cooperatives, you know, cooperatives like people working together to build. There's a cooperative called the Okulan Housing, Co-Housing Alliance. You probably heard it.

They're the only one who have actually built affordable housing in this country in the last decade. The government has not built one affordable home and the private development sector hasn't built an affordable home either um the we should be building communities through our housing system like why isn't the state which has massive land banks in limerick in cork in galway in waterford in dublin massive all around dublin all around and where it doesn't have it it should be buying it cpoing it and why isn't it bringing people who need housing together and saying right let's we'll do we'll give you support seed funds set up a cooperative we'll help you to build whoever wants to you know own a house let's go together form an ownership cooperative people want to rent go together and let's roll this out let's build this and build an alternative and you're not talking about a fantasy utopia here

you're talking about stuff that other countries have done and it has worked denmark 20 of its housing is cooperatives you know we've done it in the past you know there's loads of housing around this country that was built by cooperatives that you know our bloody you know farming system was built on cooperatives and this is the point in the value shift and if our state and why i put that headline and with the journal dot ie and why i've made the case over and over that our government really doesn't want affordable housing and doesn't want to solve the housing crisis. Because if it did, it would be doing those kind of things. It would be directing NAMA to sell its housing affordably to people. It would be using the public land and now historically the finance we can borrow

to build affordable housing through local authority sellers. It would be supporting local cooperatives all around the country, getting communities together, you know, building it. It would be stopping

the investment funds. It would actually ask me policies. It would include apartments in the measures to stop investment funds. And importantly, it would put in place rent mechanisms to actually make rent affordable. And it would put in place the remove the ability of landlords, investors to evict a tenant if they're going to sell the property or move a family in. How do you feel about rent caps, Rory?

Because rent caps is a weird rent caps is one of those ones that whenever I mention it on Twitter a bot gets into my comment that has been set up specifically to argue against rent caps yeah the rent caps whenever that happens I go if someone has put money into bots to argue with me every time I mention something and something is up how do you feel about rent caps I think rent caps are a good idea I think that when you have rents as high as we have you need to even go beyond rent caps I think what you need is measures that make rent affordable which is for example you know all the new build to rent

apartments any new apartment that's built that can be rented at whatever rate the new build to rent investor wants to rent at there's no cap on it now it's supposed to be again when I see arguments on Facebook Rory, so when I bring this shit up on Facebook, you spend too much time

on Facebook, I know, I know but I see people saying I was given a house by my parents I inherited it and I don't want to exploit people but the tax that's charged on me is too

much so i would love to rent my house at an affordable price but i can't because i have to spend 50 rent or 50 tax on this or you hear people saying um i got this second house during the boom and then i got fucked over in the recession what do you want me to do i'm a landlord but i have no choice yeah i would say straight up, the state can right now borrow at basically zero cost. It buys the unit off you and rents it out

as social housing. So you don't have to worry about it anymore. If you really don't want to be a landlord, there you go. Brilliant. You know, but seriously.

Excellent. Excellent. You know, the sort of things you do. And it comes back to me that's the point i make they don't want to solve it they want to keep the system going as it is the status quo they're not willing to step outside and go actually because they're worried about the whole house house the horse outside don't worry about the house of cards falling down you know the property system and this is where it does come

into i think that you know people say oh you're naive in what you say no i'm not naive other countries are doing it we could do it we've done it in the past but what i am very clear about is there are interests who benefit very clearly from this existing system this isn't a housing crisis for everybody but i think what i hope has changed is it come back to values i really hope and i do see it that generation rent generation stuck at home are number one saying we want a housing system that provides us with homes i don't care about investment assets or all that nonsense and their parents who are the middle class voters who the ones finna fall and finna gail listen to, are also saying, you know what,

that housing system is broken. Let's do it differently. So my hope is that that's that value societal shift that's underway. The political system hasn't realized it yet, but it's coming at them. And I think that what I'm trying to do is nurture that and make it clear because we could go all over the place you know we could do what England are doing which is you actually continue on with your housing crisis and it just gets worse and worse or we could make radical change and people or else people

will emigrate people will get apathetic people will get depressed people will give up and I don't want that to happen to people I want this to be a country where we give everybody a chance where everybody

gets an opportunity and the home is the starting place and that's what we should do and I'm getting choked up and emotional again because I feel it that we could do this

and we should be doing it yeah yeah one question i also got asked was just about people with mortgages how can someone be this is a big one that people wonder about how can someone be turned down for a mortgage in ireland when they're paying almost double that in monthly rent yeah i think that's a like it is madness you know that you're paying that much in rent of course it's proof that you can pay that and yeah the issue about the people not being able to access mortgages and and the central bank limits the central bank

limits have been shown in analysis i don't't have the figures top of my head, but roughly house prices would be 20% more than they are now if the limits weren't in place, right? So we need limits. But the problem is if you don't have housing that's available for sale in those limits, then that's your problem. So the solution is not, which what the government is doing with the shared equity scheme is give people more money so they can try and go out to chase more

housing and of course we're back in our celtic tiger it's all pushing up prices because affordable housing now according to the government is like 400 grand yeah that's nonsense you know fuck me that affordable housing is 150 000 or 700 a month to rent that's affordable housing and so the question is how are how does our housing system produce that those type of houses and that requires like if builders you know and and developers increase more so developers than builders right builders are just the people who go out and build the homes and they have a key role and they're the ones the state should be hiring to build affordable housing but you have have the developers, you know, who've bought the land, who, you know, access the finance, who then hire the builders. The developers who are increasingly investment funds are lobbying the government constantly saying, you know, it's not quite affordable for us.

You know, you know, it's not viable for us to build at these prices, you know, jack them up a bit higher. And that's what they told the government with the shared equity scheme. Now, we need you to add a state loan on top of a state mortgage, on top of a private bank mortgage so that we'll get enough money for the houses we're going to build and apartments we're going to build.

And you're going, what? There's no question. Why is the government saddling more debt on its people and saying that's okay? That's not okay. that's not okay that's not right the market has no morals the market doesn't care about affordable housing why are you building your housing policy around the market when it does not care market cares about profits exactly housing is should not be about profit it should be about providing people homes what i'd

like to know as well and you touched on at the start of the podcast there there must have been a time when ireland was doing things right like my own situation so my parents my parents didn't have fancy jobs my ma worked in dunn stores packing shelves my dad worked in in air lingus just a regular entry level job and they were able to get a house and to own it. And I remember saying to my ma, they would have bought a house in the 60s. I said, did you go to the bank?

And she's like, no, the banks weren't even involved. It was like the council or something. Yeah. And I was trying to ask her, I was like, you got a house and you didn't have to go to a bank? And she's like, no, we paid like, I don't think it was called a mortgage, but didn't have to go to a bank and she's like no we paid like i don't think it was called a mortgage but we paid money to the council like what the fuck what was that do you

know what you know what that was around the 60s yeah there was and was that a good thing there was help to buy schemes within the the council itself so if you were in council housing you could there was different schemes available where people could would be supported to buy their their home and they could allocate a certain amount their rent to buying the house to the council itself and over time they would be able to buy it and yeah there was a time when we did housing really good in this country is that a good or a bad thing or is that closer to that thatcher shit well you see because i know in england they gave people right to buy yeah but then they didn't they didn't build more council houses so council houses disappeared.

Yeah, that's the problem. I think that it's a tough one, right? Because I think the starting point is you have to be providing, you have to continue, your starting point is you continue to universal public housing. So people for working incomes, for anybody, for artists, architects, engineers, cleaners, you know, people who are unemployed, we build public housing for everybody. That's your starting point. And so when you do that, and if you're doing that enough of it, you can also be building to sell as well.

And I think that what, you know, in terms of those schemes of people buying, I think that if you had, and we look at Vienna, Vienna is a great example. It's where people looking up Vienna, look up Vienna and social housing and you'll just be blown away. They have swimming pools, they have gyms, saunas, you know, community rooms because everybody lives there. It's mixed. People are proud to live in social housing and council housing. proud to live in social housing and council housing it's like but that's a cult that's obviously a cultural thing as well because the problem here as well as you kind of say to people

how do you there is a there's a certain type of irish person who wants to buy loads of house like that celtic tiger do you know what i'd say to that i'd say that's you know to be honest our priority is people who want to have a secure home and I know for Generation Rent they'd be happy to you know buy a home in a secure community to rent a home

in a secure community they don't have that like that idea people in their 20s now are not thinking about flipping houses they're thinking about can I have somewhere to live

where I don't have to think about it it's just that it's ambient my house is an ambient thing in my life and what I'm worried about and thinking about are my passions and dreams. And also things like we talk about family.

You know, I've been contacted by people. Sure, no one's having kids. They're not having kids. There's people not having kids, man. What? Like, people are not able to have kids. These life decisions have been taken away from you because our government. People were having kids in their 20s

and it was just a thing that happened. It was. And even their 30s. Do you know what I mean? Now it's like, you know, people, it's late 30s they're going and going... Late 30s, yeah, yeah, yeah.

People are going, you know, I'm... I actually, you know, I lost the opportunity to have kids. People have contacted me. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

And I go... I know people like that. I know people like that. It's just too late now. I don't want to be 70 when they're 20 but like i think how the fuck are people not up in like just going you've stolen my life from me you know and yeah i just feel that like that we should we need to talk about this so much more because i think if we talked about it more it's the same i tell you you know you know when i think of that right I don't like talking about it because then I go

am I going to try and do a 1916 here you know what I mean it's literally you're kind of you're so disillusioned by the political system that it's like we're going to take over the GPO

yeah we're going to grow a moustache like James Connolly take a shit in the Lewis yeah is that what we're going to do because is protest enough is protest enough

is voting is voting for a political party enough I think that the anger is so much the anger is so much that sometimes people are afraid to think about it because their minds

end up going to 1916 absolutely I don't want to go there I don't want to start thinking about I've gone there I've thought about that proclamation and what it says about

cherishing all children of of the nation equally I've thought about that proclamation and what it says about cherishing all children of the nation equally. I've thought about it year after year when I see homeless children eaten out of takeaway cartons on Dublin Street because they can't get, you know, they're living in emergency accommodation. I think of it every time that proclamation and what it said, what this republic was supposed to be, what it's founding people, Con people connelly the whole lot and i do think that's important because the emotion is taken out of this and when you take the emotion out of it you have people like that person you just said but i want to be able to buy five homes and i want to be able to rent out and you're going sorry you know actually we're building our housing system around people and human beings yeah not investment assets and that's our starting point and i think that's the big change and for people who are sometimes what could be helpful

to rory is is when when you're speaking about this this way to these people is is remind them of things that we still have like okay pregnancy for instance if someone gets pregnant in this country they don't have to pay for it. Doesn't matter who the fuck you are. If you get pregnant in this country, then maternity services are well funded. And that's a good thing. Yeah. And why don't we just do that then with housing as well?

Exactly. Why? Exactly. And education. Yeah. Housing, education, health. There are three things you need. And from that,

you can deal with precarious work i'm not saying it's right and of course we need to address that as well but you can if you have a secure home you have an affordable home that's available then you can you know you can have your kids you can do your family you can do your what you want to do your music your education you're all that you're you know in a shitty job if that's what you're in you know but you know you have your base to come back to you're not worried about that that's the thing people can't even yeah people with the shitty job now don't don't they don't have the space to do the things outside the shitty job that makes the shitty job acceptable exactly exactly you know and you see the the young

people you know on the streets of dublin and been harassed and harangued and you know people getting up to all sorts and you go what do they have I would ask that question what do they have what future are you giving them you know and that's where I go to that you know you say about 1916 and I do feel we need to channel a bit of that I do feel we need to get angry I do feel we need to raise our voices but we can do this in constructive ways. And I think that there's, you know, we're a couple of years out for a general election. We don't need the blood sacrifice just yet. Well, the problem is it's been sacrificed already.

But, you know, people can like there's an organization called Uplift, which is an online digital campaign group that has a petition set up that I've been linking in with them around this. You go sign that petition that's very clear demands for what should be done around the right to housing stopping the investor funds people can go on to that and what does it mean if that gets enough signatures so what i feel is happening is that the more and more public pressure is put on government this is a you know it's an age-old social change tool. This is, you know, we've seen it in repeal. We've seen it in marriage equality. We've seen it in water charges. You see it all the time and things.

Like the government, for example, you know, did react to the investment fund pressure and did something. It wasn't meaningful, but they did something because they felt the pressure. If the politicians feel the pressure enough, they'll change.

That's what I think. So we need to make them, they need to feel the pressure. And how you do it in a constructive way, I think. So petitions are a really important way. If we got that to 100,000, 200,000, a million signatures, they can't ignore that. The media can't ignore it. If you then start talking to your parents, talking to your friends, talking to your family, talking to everybody on social media, share it. Say, do you know what?

There's four solutions to this crisis. A right to housing in the Constitution. The state government to build 30,000 affordable houses every year. Put in place tenant protections. And the last one's gone out of my head. Well, there we go. Three, right? But, you know, they're there. You you know let's get everybody talking about those and let's oh sorry the fourth thing was people telling their story saying we're not accepting it

and telling the human story get that conversation going let's turn and then contextualize that conversation also within you can look at the mental health crisis in the context of this too because a huge problem for young people is going i don't know where i'm going to be in 20 years i cannot see if you need to be able to say to yourself i can at least imagine where i'm going to be yeah and quite a lot of people don't have that they don't have the sense of a huge problem rory is the the sense of adult autonomy yeah being able to go i'm a fucking adult and i'm separate to my parents and i'm my own person and i make my choices you're not making that when you're 32 living in in the spare bedroom no and your ma's still kind of washing your jocks yeah because the i don't believe it's psychologically possible to fully live in your

parents gaff and then for the emotional historical relationship you have with your parents to not be present no you know what i mean no absolutely you speaking to your parents as an adult is something that you can only do when you're fully independent and separate but once you're living under that roof once you're going in the morning yeah fuck it i'll have a few sausages now if you're making them it's right that you're infantilized you're infantilized and when you're in when you're infantilized you can't have self-esteem when you don't have self-esteem that's when your mental health isn't shit yeah you don't have self-worth yeah no you're absolutely correct the this housing crisis is also a mental health crisis. And you have set out exactly how it links. But I think the self-esteem one is really important.

Because when people feel, again, the housing crisis, their housing situation, living in their parents' house is their own fault. Then the self-esteem is knocked. And they don't feel a capacity to change it that affects other aspects of their life and of course it it feeds into depression it feeds into anxiety but it feeds into people's sense of self like the pride someone has be it a rental home or be it an owned home when they go and they can bring their parents over you know yeah you can't ever or the bloody partner or whatever or friends people aren't riding roadie well that could be there's young people not able to have sex there's young people not able to because it's like i'm i'm i'm fucking 27 i'm not riding someone with my parents next door in the room. Well, it's certainly, I imagine, a lot more rushed anyway.

Yeah. But that sexuality, again, is a huge part of the human condition, who we are. Like, fucking hell. Yeah. No, it is. It's personal development. You know, these are actual psychological developmental stages

that people go through. And then if you don't go through them, they're psychologically destructive to you. Because i've done a podcast on this before where um i i was saying that the tom hanks film big is actually a work of accurate science fiction because if you you know the tom hanks yeah i was listening to this one on you i heard it yeah yeah it's a good point so so like we as a generation have become infantilized because of things like this yeah but then you have a toxic corporate environment of the digital corporations where when you turn up like i was looking at um shared accommodation you know those shared accommodation things that

they're trying to do do in dublin is the co-living the call yeah so one of these co-living developers said when someone said to them do you think it's fair to have adults 27 adults sharing one kitchen this developer literally said should these people work in google and facebook they're they're you know dinners are provided for them and stuff they don't really need kitchens and then i started to think the corporations that are providing jobs are actively infantilizing their employees with bouncy castles, with providing dinner, with providing breakfasts. They're becoming a paternal role. It's not your employer anymore. You don't have rights.

They're your fucking parents. And this is somehow exploiting this culture of feeling like infants, even though we're in our 30s. Do you know what? You know, you're absolutely right and i think that the housing adds to that and whether you're renting and people feel like you know they can't buy a home they have no security when they're renting and that's something the government could do overnight they could give tenants proper security by removing the ability to evict them by putting in place a permanent uh security of tenure then people could actually at least plan something but the the big thing i think though is interesting

is can this be an opportunity where young people take their power back and actually say you know what we can have some power and capability here if we change this. And I feel we are at a moment in time. I really do. We're at like a crossroads. Is this going to be a permanent, unaffordable, dystopia, immigration, people suffering, mental health crisis continued from the housing system? Or actually, we're going to take a big, different, a big, brave move and go down the Denmark, vienna affordable homes road and i think that a lot of this depends on whether the younger people and everyone who feels you know part of this actually does goes takes their power and capacity and goes no this is a turning point

the esri our state advisory agency research research agency, but it's one of the state's longstanding research agencies, just said last week, the state can borrow between four to seven billion every year, should borrow four to seven billion to build affordable housing and social housing, and that it could do this without jeopardizing the economy. This is game changer stuff. The state can do this this but i think it needs and then again i've probably asked you why the fuck won't they then if they can do it is it because this is unfavorable for the investors it is the combination of things that i said it's like

they they got themselves locked into a policy that developed as they developed over time in favor of the investors moving away from building social housing, turning to the private landlords, protecting these different interests, the property finance, banking, the property finance industrial complex of property interest, developers, financiers, investors, this real estate interest that they have orientated their policy to them. And they've got us to this point. And if they were to say now, actually, we need to change all this we were wrong are they mature what are

the consequences of the government doing that huh what are the consequences of the government tomorrow saying to all these events investors you're fucking our country up so fuck off like germany did what are the consequences then what What can the big scary investment funds do to Ireland? If Ireland tomorrow, the government say, fuck off. No more. It's not fair for a giant pile of cash to compete with a fucking family of people in their 30s. That's not fair. So fuck off.

Currently, they could do nothing. They would just have to accept it. And that's what Germany did. That's not fair, so fuck off. Currently, they could do nothing. They would just have to accept it. And that's what Germany did. That's what Germany did. And if you look at it, what actually would happen, of course, is the investors would jump up and down. They'd say Ireland is not a favourable place

to invest in. What's the main reason the government's saying we need... They really didn't stop, didn't put measures to stop them coming in. They still want them to come in. They say we need them to supply uh in apartments basically we need to supply of housing and apartments mainly apartments but that's bullshit because you've just said that they can borrow that

money themselves exactly that's bullshit and also the type of housing that they are providing is this unaffordable rental yeah and so why how is that any sort of good supply? Do you know what would happen? Yeah. The price of land would drop massively. So then the state could buy up that land. Apartment prices would drop dramatically. That's what would happen.

Houses would drop in prices and people would be able to buy affordable ones and the state would be able to buy up more land that's now cheap and hand it over to a mixture of housing associations cooperatives irish builders and build affordable housing one last question rory right and this is a question that i want to ask myself and also a question that i was asked so you're like you're you're a lecturer in social policy you've dedicated a huge amount of your adult life to research in this area to thinking about it to doing this at the highest level why

isn't someone like you in in a position in government to make these calls like do the question on instagram was do experts in social policy ever have any input into housing policy or are the reports research solutions ignored by the government like it just doesn't make sense that you've dedicated so much of your life to this and then it's like well why why isn't rory in in being listened to then or are not you the other people in your field also? Well, I think that it goes back to who government and decision makers have listened to over the last decade. And I go even further back. And it's not people like me who advocate and who research for public housing, for affordable housing, for the right to housing. They have listened to the investment funds, the property interests, academics who promote that approach, the market approach.

Is that known as lobbying? It is known as lobbying, yeah. That's what they've listened to. They've listened to the lobbyists. And they have tried to paint people like me as being ideological and I say I absolutely am ideological I have an ideology which is the housing system should provide affordable homes for people and I

believe housing is a human right like that's deeply ideological yeah yeah yeah yeah you know and why they don't listen is because then they try because I've obviously been pointing out for the last and have been banging on since well over a decade that their housing policies weren't going to work to provide affordable housing. that person over,

rather than you. What does that person, what does Mr. Investor, Mr. Lobbyist have that's so shiny and lovely to an individual politician or a minister for housing? What did they have that you don't?

Bags of cash. There you go. There you go. Mountains and mountains of cash. And that's not just mountains of cash going to that politician and I wouldn't, you know, it's not that it's going directly to them. It's the mountains of cash and that's not just mountains of cash going to that politician and i wouldn't you know it's not that it's yeah of course it's the mountains of cash that says we're going to

deliver all these homes for you don't worry about it you know we're gonna and we will make you look good to your constituents exactly and we'll keep the property prices high and we'll keep the rents high which you think is what your constituents want. But you misread the room. They have seriously misread the room. I've had you for nearly two hours now, Rory. So I'm going to leave it off at this, all right? Good man. Chase, we could keep going.

I know. Thank you so much for that chat, right? That was absolutely fucking fantastic. Listen. So that was a really enjoyable chat. It left me feeling informed and empowered with a sense of purpose and I hope I did the same for you fair play to Rory Hearn

check out his podcast Reboot Republic one thing I one thing I want there's a number of things I could have talked to Rory for a lot longer I might have him on again

one thing I didn't ask or address and I wish I did is I wanted to let you know of an organisation called Kato One thing I didn't ask or address, and I wish I did, is I wanted to let you know of an organisation called CATU. C-A-T-U. Which is the Community Action Tenants Union. And they're an Irish grassroots union for tenants.

And also I think landlords can join as well. But basically, if you join the cat 2 union if you're renting what it does is it they collectively act to protect people from eviction alongside and this is one thing i wish i got into and we didn't alongside the the inequality of this housing crisis and the rent crisis it's also being bolstered by the irish police the gardaí and unfortunately people are being evicted from their homes often unfairly sometimes slum landlords are given more rights than tenants people are really being exploited and an eviction is a very traumatic and unfair thing to happen. CATU, Community Action Tenants Union, look them up online,

when you join this union collectively, what they do is when someone's getting evicted, everyone shows up. Everyone shows up and creates noise and makes it difficult for these unfair evictions to happen. So I would recommend check out CATU and consider joining that union I'll chat to ye next week I'll probably have a hot take

who knows, in the meantime enjoy the lovely weather enjoy our new freedoms meet a friend, have a drink, go to the gym, rub a dog smell the fucking air beautiful, beautiful air right now in June fantastic air

the night time air, the air at night time all air in June is magnificent the morning air I don't know any air in June that isn't class four in the morning air before the fucking sun comes up and the birds start singing it's just class air in June.

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