There is much anger in Ireland over the country’s ongoing housing crisis. The Dail put in place an eviction ban over the winter. It got them some good headlines for a while, but the ban had the usual effect of driving smaller landlords out of the market, making the crisis worse. The ban is due to expire on 31st March. This will result in many people being evicted simultaneously on 1st April. Reddit Ireland is outraged. Here is a thread titled “Disgraceful” about how many Airbnb properties are available compared to how few long term rental properties. In fact the comparison is false. As a commenter called “Th0rHere” says, “Airbnb shows listings even when booked (to make future bookings possible). Daft [a property website] shows only available places to rent right now, as your not going to advertise place to rent if it’s already being rented. These numbers are not comparable.”
Even so, it is true that an awful lot of Irish properties that used to be let to long term tenants are now given over to Airbnb. I have posted about the issue a couple of times. Why is this happening? Why would anyone choose the constant work and uncertainty of letting out their property as an Airbnb over the stability of having a long term tenant?
On that same “Disgraceful” thread, a Reddit Ireland commenter called “RestrepoDoc2” explained why:
If I was a property owner with an apartment or flat in a popular tourist area I’d have to weigh up the benefits of renting to someone on a long term rental compared to short term lets on Airbnb.
I can’t really come up with any benefits of a long term rental agreement other than less property management logistics ie. getting cleaners in, checking the property for damage or stolen items between guests and providing keys, codes etc.
The benefits of Airbnb to the property owner are nearly too abundant to outline in any real detail but just off the top of my head.
Security of your property, card details and passport details held by Airbnb, guest history, can meet them in person. Any antisocial behaviour in the property can be dealt with by local police as they can enter your property with your permission and make people leave (I assume).
You can rent it out as suits you, can stay in it when you want, store your property in a locked storage room there, let family or friends stay in it sometimes. You can do repair work or refurbishment when you want.
You don’t have to worry about if a tenant has job security, you don’t have to tiptoe around the subject of HAP or any disabilities a prospective tenant might declare to you at a viewing. You don’t have to consider arranging inspections of your property by RTB agents. You don’t need to pay for a professionally drawn up rental agreement, or drafted legal letters in case of non payment, damage to property, refusal to allow reasonable access for inspection, anti-social behaviour, notifications in writing of rent increases or end of tenancy etc. Then there’s the rent a mob crowds like CATU being legitimised by attention seeking opposition party TDs and local councillors. They will literally turn up to intimidate any property owner once a dispute is raised by a tenant whether they’re refusing to pay rent, squatting, changing the locks of your property etc.
There’s been several local councillors and a partially state funded organisation in Threshold literally advising people to break the law by refusing to move out of someone’s property even when given relevant notice and for permitted reasons. This is forcing property owners to seek a court order which could take another year etc. With the upcoming vote about extending the eviction ban and talk of further infringing on property owners rights. Realistically it may soon not even be possible to sell your property, to move a family member or yourself into the property, to carry out refurbishments on your own property.
Basically it would be madness to choose to provide a long term rental lease to somebody. Instead of fixing that mess of a situation caused by government intervention, they are trying to ban Airbnb or regulate it out of existence.
RestrepoDoc2’s comment got 3 upvotes, one of which was mine.
A comment from “Irish_drunkard” saying, “We banned Uber because it would effect our taxi business, why can’t we ban AirBNB?” got 985 upvotes.
Very good article with which I agree But why did we have a housing crisis ? Because of zoning laws ..
Any spirit of liberty in Ireland seems to have died around 1922.
Why not order plumbers and electricians to work for people for free during a pandemic? Why not pass a law that grocery stores must drop prices by 90% when the economy tanks? Wouldn’t that help the “general stability of the society” (which is the rationale used to defend the eviction moratorium in several US states)?
We don’t do those things because, when we decide legislatively that someone needs aid, we take the money to pay for that aid generally, from everyone. If a poor person needs a plumber or electrician, we have programs funded by the tax rolls that pay for them. When people cannot afford food, we help them through general taxation. That’s how these moratoriums should have been approached – by using public money to pay people’s rent in appropriate situations.
We don’t insist that one small subset of people provide that aid. That would be unfair. (Now ask me how I feel about ordering all lawyers to work some minimum number of pro bono hours each year.)
But the eviction moratoriums were just one more step into raw mob theft from unloved groups. They were ruled to NOT be governmental “takings” by several US courts (which would have required payment by government to the landlords), only on the basis that the debts owed by people who were not paying would survive – but everyone knew that those debts would never be repaid in most situations. (When someone cannot pay their rent for many months, the chance of them coming into enough money months later to repay the debt is slim.)
Minnesota ended its eviction moratorium last June. The supply of private rental housing has been dropping drastically since it started. In St. Paul (our state capital), the governmental response to this has been to impose new rent control measures.
Really. That’s how they’ve decided to rescue the private rental market. It burns.
bobby b – that is the “logic” of the interventionist position, it is (at best) madness. But then madness now controls everything in economic life. As for the intellectual corruption of the courts – as you know that goes back a very long way, such things as the Greenback cases (at least the second Greenback case) of the 19th century and the Gold Clause cases of 1935 show total corruption of the courts. Such things as refusing to do anything about obviously rigged elections in some States in 2020 and 2022 should come as no shock at all when it comes from a legal system that, for example, declared a farmer selling food on his own farm was “interstate commerce” – one of the corrupt World War II judgements that still stands.
Ireland is much the same – except that their courts do not have to be “creative” in getting round their Constitution, as the Irish Constitution was not written to limit government. That is not a claim that the United Kingdom is any better, an “unwritten constitution” really means no-constitution-at-all.
Private property rights mean very little to the courts (anywhere) not against “the good of the people” or some such B.S. – and no branch of government, not judicial, executive or legislative has any real knowledge of economics – or any other subject.
JohnK.
Ireland was no more economically interventionist than the United Kingdom – in some ways less so.
And there was a social conservatism in Ireland that resisted the destructive, anti family and anti cultural tradition, policies of other countries – that is gone now. Now Ireland is as “Woke” as most other Western countries. It is astonishing how quickly Ireland was corrupted culturally – but then to destroy (to corrupt) is much easier than to build.
One must not dwell on all this too much – it leads to very dark thoughts. Something I need to remind myself quite often.
As for possible dark motivations of policies in Ireland and elsewhere – yes destroying independent landlords and destroying small business enterprises, fits in with Agenda 2030 and the general international Corporate State. However, there may be no dark intentions – remember one is dealing with people (governments, courts and so on) who have no knowledge of the principles of law, or political philosophy, or economics, or of any subject – if something sounds good and they think it is for the “greatest good of the greatest number” (not even rule utilitarianism – these government and corporate types are crude act utilitarians) they will do it – after all it might make them popular.
They may have evil intentions – but they would behave in the same (demented) way even if they did not have evil intentions.
Essentially they are savages – although they are living in a advanced society, they have no knowledge of the principles that created that society.
“But Paul that means that society will fall – because it is controlled by people who have no understanding of the principles that it depends on, or understand but have a deep hatred of these principles”.
Yes, and that is unfortunate. It is also a mistaken idea of the late F.A. Hayek (taken from some 18th century thinkers) that society was a matter of “human action, but not human design” – in reality society was built by people who understood the necessary principles (a least to some extent) and made very great efforts to apply them to build society – they understood things, they made decisions, they acted on those decisions. But over time they have been replaced by people who either do not understand the principles of law, political philosophy and economics – or have an active hatred of these principles.
It is necessary to remove these people from positions of authority in the various countries they now dominate – but the question is how?
Things like this make me want the supporters to get everything they ask for, absolutely all of it right between the sodding eyes. My only sympathy is for the hapless minority who didn’t vote for these arseholes. Born in Dublin’s fair shitty, I got the fuck out years ago because of ignorant cunts like these, but Canada is fucked up in its own special way too.
To adapt something that John O’Sulivan (now Danube Institute) said long ago – he said that if an organisation is not explicitly “right wing” it will inevitably become left wing – destructive of society.
To adapt that, it is true to say that if someone in authority does not understand the principles upon which society depends, they will become a threat to society. They will do harm.
Good intentions are not enough – not without understanding of basic principles, and a willingness to apply them and defend them.
True. Even a willingness to think beyond ‘eviction bad, ban eviction’ to some of the possible consequences would help. Try telling that to the typical leftist in the street though. Actually I assume you have, and have seen the same look of utter incomprehension I have. “Good intentions are all you need” seems to be a fundamental article of their faith and when things go wrong it has to be because someone else doesn’t have them.
PM: “They may have evil intentions – but they would behave in the same (demented) way even if they did not have evil intentions.”
So true. Living amongst such a high infestation of them in Minnesota, I will attest that, for the most part, these aren’t evil people. They honestly believe in what they utter. They honestly believe that we are evil, just as we (or at least I) think they are stupid, naive, uneducated, overly tribal, historically illiterate and incurious. But they’re family, so . . .
Barbarus and bobby b – good comments.
bobby b – my own family were a bit different.
“The personal is the political” was true for my father and my half brother and for me. My father changed sides (from Cong to Cap) but that point remained constant – if you were his enemy politically you were his enemy (period), my half brother choose the Cong side and I choose the Cap side (not that there really is a capitalist side anymore in this Credit Money world) – but judging people politically (at least to some extent) is something we share – or shared (I do not know if Tony Marks is alive – although, if any legal officer is reading this, no I did not kill him).
Judging people (at least to some extent) politically, an evil person – I certainly have a lot of evil in me.
By the way “your Attorney General” (or rather the Attorney General of Minnesota) bobby b, is not suffering from lack of knowledge – the Minnesota Attorney General is bad man, he does harm, knowing it is harm, because he chooses to do harm.
But I suspect you already know that.
I think I may need to have a good look at my computer – the “t” key is not operating all the time.
Paul Marks re your “t” key.
I had a problem with my “a” key: either not registering, or double registering. I swept under the key with a wide, thin, paint brush, and out came a large ball of fluff. Key now works perfectly.