It’s interesting how the Spanish are proposing to deal with the housing crisis in Spain. One thing that is obvious is the social cancer and deprivation that is caused in societies throughout the world when the rich and powerful are allowed to make the agenda for themselves using a vital component as the cornerstone of society to exploit an investment opportunity, namely the family home.
Over the last 30 years we have not seen many effective housing initiatives to deal with this social cancer. One thing we did manage was to stop the House of Keys from following the UK by selling off local authority housing otherwise the crisis would be tenfold on this Island.
When are we going to see the Government of the Isle of Man actually start making the agenda to help the vulnerable on this vital issue? There are easy solutions to easing the crisis so why delay? We are in danger of seeing the mass emigration from the Island as in days of my youth where it was a matter of no opportunity on the employment front. Now the problem is no opportunity to build a family home on the Island at any affordable price. Gerrymandering the housing criteria by artificially low levels of income to keep the list for authority housing and first-time buyers low is not the solution to addressing the issue.
The only way forward is to develop into planning a use and ownership system on a percentage of all new developments so that certain houses can only be owner occupied by an Isle of Man worker. These properties could not be owned if you own a second residential property on the Island (or elsewhere) or rented out. Incorporating this into a progressive re-introduction of a Government mortgage scheme, using this approach as part of the agreement for the equity stake, the Government provides. To kickstart this proposal we need to see land designated in planning for this type of accommodation in order to bring down artificial inflated prices.
This is the only way we’re going to achieve it without having a crash and see yet another repeat of history where property prices collapse, rich people buy them up for pittance and then exploit the rental market and ultimately vulnerable for a basic commodity of life such as a roof over your head.
It is shameful the way this and the previous administration, even in my time, have not addressed this issue. If we’re not careful we are now on the verge of destroying the whole economic base of the Manx economy.
I was one of the few that went into Tynwald with integrity and came out with it 30 years later. The lack of anybody trying to address this issue in Tynwald at the present time horrifies me.
One understands well with the ministry system of Government that we have created effectively one party state by patronage/ I was right to vote against it on my own. It has allowed the biggest economic boom to be squandered and effectively looted like some Third World country. We are now talking about attacking frontline services like health, social care, education and things that we were once proud of on our Island. If we are not careful we could see a repeat of history in the United Kingdom with Thatcherism and the place being looted by cronies.
The problem we’ve got here is there is no institution to develop strategic policy in the interest of the common good. It’s the general public who get short changed every time and that’s the tragedy. Money should be set aside to protect us and the financial security of the next generation.