Summary: <br> <a href="https://pure.qub.ac.uk/en/persons/colin-harvey" data-wpel-link="external" target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer">Colin Harvey</a> is Professor of Human Rights Law in the School of Law, Queen’s University Belfast, a Fellow of the Senator George J Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice, and an Associate Fellow of the Institute of Irish Studies. In <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/a-new-ireland-1-000-leading-people-call-on-varadkar-to-lead-change-1.4071063" data-wpel-link="external" target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer">November, his group, Ireland’s Future sent a letter</a> to An Taoiseach calling for a new conversation about the constitutional future of the island of Ireland. <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> The polls from Michael Ashcroft – conducted by professional polling companies – gave the first indication of a majority in Northern Ireland in favour of reunification with the south, but the demographic breakdown is the real shocker:<br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> *****<br> <br> <br> <br> Following on from what I was saying at the top of the last podcast, <a href="https://twitter.com/daire_shaw/status/1219223886652485633" data-wpel-link="external" target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer">I got in a couple</a> of <a href="https://twitter.com/HeresHowPodcast/status/1218953042143449095" data-wpel-link="external" target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer">Twitter debates</a>, I won’t say Twitter spats, it was all very polite, I’ll link the threads on the website, but I got in a couple of Twitter debates during the week. It was about housing, building and planning policies. People are, rightly, very annoyed when they see homelessness all around them, and derelict buildings, empty houses, and prime sites that lie empty for decades.<br> <br> <br> <br> The thing is that, as<br> with almost every problem, there a quick, simple, easy-to-understand solution<br> that is completely wrong. In this case the two quick, simple, easy and<br> completely wrong solutions are rent controls and using compulsory purchase<br> orders – CPOs – to forcibly buy empty properties and house homeless people in<br> them.<br> <br> <br> <br> The first thing to say<br> here is that I don’t doubt for a moment the good faith of the people who I was<br> disagreeing with, I’m certain that they are motivated by nothing but a desire<br> to help their fellow citizens.<br> <br> <br> <br> But let’s take those<br> ideas in order. The Swedish economist Assar Lindbeck, said “<a href="https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Assar_Lindbeck" data-wpel-link="external" target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer">Next to bombing, rent controls are<br> the most efficient known technique for destroying cities</a>.” What he meant is that, like with any<br> product, if you artificially lower the price, then the producers respond by<br> just stopping the production of that product. Why should they invest over here<br> when the government forces them to give that product away for below its market value,<br> when they can invest over there and make more money.<br> <br> <br> <br> Most people will see<br> the flaw in that argument; even if it’s true that rent controls lead to<br> dereliction, that is treating housing like just another commodity like<br> lawnmower widgets – but housing is much more important than that, and we can’t<br> do with a shortage of housing in the way that we could probably manage with a<br> shortage of lawnmower widgets.<br> <br> <br> <br> And I agree, housing<br> is different, it’s not just a product, and that means we’ll probably need<br> special rules to deal with it. But just because we have special rules, that<br> doesn’t mean that people won’t still act in their own rational best interests.<br> Everybody will still try to get the best housing they can for the best price,<br> and developers and landlords will try to get the most profit from their<br> investments.<br> <br> <br> <br> At the moment we have<br> a serious lack of suitable housing, and that is causing rents that are high and<br> rising.
