A thought-provoking take on the housing crisis, with Conor Skehan.

26:55How many homeless people do you think there are in Ireland? Ballpark, to the nearest 10 ,000. 10 ,000. There you go, well done. the various different people dealing with the welfare of unsheltered people in Dublin do a count every year they go out and they count doorsteps and back lanes and this that and the other how many do they find I don't know about 90 sometimes 110 it fluctuates a little bit from year to year hasn't budged in 20 years that's a homeless person that's an unsheltered person yes right but you know that awful word that we like to use which is conflation. So a charity who shall remain nameless takes a photograph of somebody in those circumstances and then applies the statistic you gave a moment of.

27:39Very interesting. Exactly. And what those people are is they're people who are in a particular category of the housing waiting list. Yes. Ah. It's just stopped control. So you're saying that it's technical homelessness. Correct. None of those people are sleeping in doorways. But there are charities. Now they stopped it since I started Kickup about a few years ago showing a photograph of a child. What about families Living in hotels. It's another version of the same thing. Where do you think those families came from? No, you tell me. They made a decision to get themselves onto a particular version of the housing list by changing whatever accommodation procedure they had previously.

28:15So one of the things you could do, for instance, is you could incentivise natal home stabilisation. So that means you continue to live with your mammy for just an extra six months or nine months or 12 months and there'd be incentives there. But when they did a study into the causes of homelessness, family disputes was a very major driver of people putting themselves onto a homeless list for their local authority. You have to ask, where do these people come from? Why do they do it? And routes to homelessness, abuse in the home is another one. People are being abused, so it's a very real issue sometimes.

28:51Alcoholism, the behaviour of the person who becomes homeless. and studyings of that mean that you can't just use that big huge fat brush of homelessness and slop it around and like whitewash get down to the and the same thing then I understand get down to the nitty gritty and examine the data boring stuff and the same with people say you know it's terrible we've got all these vacant houses why doesn't somebody do something about it well when I was in the housing agency we went over to England and Scotland they have people called a vacant homes officer it's their job in the county council and the reason they have them is that most places that are vacant are vacant because of a menu of up to about 20 different things.

29:27It's never the same two in the 20 that are causing it. And these vacant homes people identify a house, identify the owner, try and help them work their way through the thing and out the far side of it. Hard work, hard work. How does it feel like being vilified? Are you, if you have tough skin or do you feel personally aggrieved? I've an even better armour. I don't have any participation in social media and I have a wife who does vigorously and she tells, she says, oh, you're not very popular today and that's all I get over breakfast. Really? I've learned not to ask. No. Yeah, so you wouldn't have a look.

29:59You're mad. What does upset me is things like my family and friends and my children do and they tell me, God, Dad, you're being roasted today. Yeah. I get that. I did an impression of somebody the other day. It was actually Garen Noon, right? And now it wasn't a bad impression. I'm delicious. Do you know that fella? Yeah, chocolate. You know, I love chocolate. what the fuck are you talking about right and I did an impression of him anyway they posted it online into Day FM anyway what I didn't realise was that all of Garen's friends all of not Garen's friends but all of Garen's followers swarmed just went get that bastard off a fucking terrible impression worst impression ever he's hung up he's aged washed up blah blah that's a disgraceful impression as if I had committed a crime and the crime was just that you did a bad impression or that I did a decent but maybe what is an impression and anyways so my son Dash who's 18 said dad I knew this you're getting absolutely rinsed absolutely rinsed and I went why am I getting rinsed I could have told you half an hour ago he is a protected species online so anyway they told you you're getting rinsed and so you don't read it yourself let me just I've been listening to you now right for a while and you tell me it's our first date I know but you tell me to me to me you come across a little bit as a kind of an economic rationalist so you're a person who says that's not a nice thing necessarily no I actually agree with you it's not a nice thing so you're coming across a little bit like Mario there are inalienable facts out there not opinions there are facts and when you dig deep down into the data this is how it is not how you necessarily want to hear it is so for example Ireland isn't peculiar or anomalous the world has a problem with housing the world has a problem with the financialisation of housing, the commodification, the turning of houses into investments and that Ireland doesn't necessarily have a huge problem with homelessness either indeed you said to me look at the figures do you think that, I mean I'm not trying to vilify you but do you think maybe you come across as a little bit rationalistic solely rationalistic as opposed to well you could argue with me as opposed to making stuff up Mario?

32:26Well making stuff up has a fine history you know an aircraft fell out of the skies a lot in the 1940s and 50s because people who are material scientists made up the facts about this metal will be okay at that temperature and that height so we do live in a world where facts are pretty useful things so yes I would err on the side of rationality all the time but through marriage and divorce and having children and all that. I've learned the world is not black and white either. And that our opinions are part of our culture. They're part of the things we value, things that we believe are important.

33:00And you can't separate those things out. So it is a fact that Ireland's housing figures are what I say they are, but it's also a fact that we're people who care deeply about it and we seem to have slightly more sensitive buttons than other people to press about it. That's who we are. Is that because of Richard Harris's performance in the field? Could have been. Could have been. like. Don't, please, don't. They drove us from the field. They drove us away. Tig. Go down and try and take a field off a farmer in the hills up in Sardinia and see how he reacts because he still has a shotgun. They drove us from the field.

33:33Tig. So the human, like. Terrible impression of Italian. Ario, you're great. You're delicious. Don't worry about him. So the cultural thing is an element. It's not a huge element, but it is an element. And in terms of the rationality, there is a case for saying, well, you know, either somebody says what the facts are, the emperor has new clothes. And we're seeing a country across the Atlantic from us where facts are increasingly evaporating. Well, I'll stop you there actually, because it's interesting for a person like you, no, no, because a person like you then, who's, you've just said there that you are, you are, you are a rationalist.

34:06This must drive you, this must be a very, well, this must be a very interest, great interest to you what's happening across there. I remember a moment when I thought it all went pear-shaped I think it all went pear-shaped in about 2017 when Kellyanne Conway appeared on Fox News and somebody went no well Miss Conway that's a fact and she said well we have our own alternative facts she said I think that's when really the precise moment I saw the wheels falling off the wagon it was Barack Obama standing up at the press conference club and the dinner and the whole audience was full of the great and the good and he was the best act in town.

34:46He had them all eating out of the palm of his hands and I suddenly realised all those people were absolutely convinced that they were right, they were virtuous, they knew where the facts were, they knew what was cool and what wasn't and that would be fine, good luck to them. But then when you get one of their ilk step out the door called Hillary Clinton and called all the rest of those people the despicables or deplorables, you know. That's the problem is creating a tent and then locking everybody else out. I used to live in the United States and when I lived there I witnessed some of the worst poverty I've seen anywhere in the world people forget there is that side of you know some states in the United States going back to housing 30 % of the accommodation is in trailer homes Yeah And these aren't the nice ones you get in British Bay I can tell you No I've been saying it on this podcast for years as well 47 to 50 million people on food stamps in the United States We don't even understand that kind of poverty I mean those places where the trailer parks are in the United States everybody forgets the trailer park isn't really the issue It's that it's outside the ordinance of the township it's in.

35:46So there's no access to health care or education. Is that right? We have no idea what poverty looks like. None. And yet there is no media you will find in the United States. No media, hardly, who will disagree with somebody coming on and saying, they're coming to the greatest country in the world. They're knocking on the door to get into the greatest country in the world. I mean, you're just, it's staggering. it's the greatest country in the world for only a small cohort of people who earn and you can nearly put a figure on it who earn probably about 400 over 450 thousand dollars a year yeah and they're taking that ladder up after you know we're in this problem that is more of the same of the virtue signaling of breaking everything down into binaries United States is an amazing place it's full of amazing people of course it is some of the best friends and the greatest people yeah but you know what this isn't a bad place either no No.

36:41Different measures? This is an amazing country. Yeah. You know, the problem with this building and all the people with the microphones and all that is it's so easy to talk about the bad stuff, but you follow somebody who is on a dodgy journey in their life through mental health or physical health or poverty or trauma or whatever it is. Follow them in detail. Follow the detail. This has become a fantastic country for minding ourselves, minding each other and putting our resources into that. You think so? Well, show me a better one. Would you see yourself as a sort of an economic conservative or an economic liberal?

37:11Sorry to put a binary choice to you. Yeah, you just did that, didn't you? Well, when I asked myself... You said already at the beginning you do believe in capitalism. Exactly. When I have this conversation myself, where I end up with is that what seems to work the least bad, as the Winston Churchill joke about democracy, is managed capitalism. It has to be managed in a context. So capitalism left by itself is like leaving a fire and walking off. I totally agree. the tended fire, the tended fire. I totally agree. The American model of rampant capitalism seems to premise the idea, or seems to posit the notion that the free market left of its own free will will result in best possible outcomes for everybody ultimately.

37:59Right? Which then kind of extrapolates from that that human beings will do the right thing. okay or sorry human beings left to their own devices left to their own devices human beings operating with only self-interest in mind okay we'll eventuate these results but but this this is a negative framing of humans right basically what it sees us is it sees us as primitive, grabbing, bullying and colonialist, ultimately. Whereas there are other people in the world with different socio-philosophical positions. For example, a person I particularly like, the Rutger Bregman, this guy is a Dutch philosopher, a Dutch political economist philosopher.

38:53And he was the guy that became famous for being in Davos. and he appeared in Davos with all the billionaires and he's on stage and he went okay yeah so let's I think we're missing a problem here I think we're all missing the elephant in the room and everybody looks at him all the billionaires like the elephant in the room is why aren't you paying more taxes okay and he got into trouble for this he got vilified around the world but he also became famous and then people spoke to him more on TV and radio and everything and it turned out that he has a very optimistic view of humankind he believes humans natural instinct is community and to help each other.

39:28It is, yeah. That's our default. Exactly. I believe this as well. I have friends who, I'm going to get in trouble now for outing this, who are all in the charity sector, right? I detest charities. And people say, why don't you do something for a charity? I say, I pay my taxes. And if you want to do more for those things, pay your taxes. Have you paid your full share of taxes? That's how you help it. Because a charity is a type of monopolisation of a particular topic or interest and I the rich person are going to get to tell you the poor person or the person who's got a physical handicap what's important and it's the society who decides that what's important that's why you pay your taxes and we put them through the filter through the big hopper the big masher that's called the dial we all elbow it out and we all say we finally agreed this is the most important thing and that's grand that's been through due process I like that so managed capitalism to answer your question that's where I fall I don't know what the name for that kind of person is but it's understanding understanding that the need for the engine of greediness and for winning, that's an important thing.

40:30And I have friends who are very red in tooth and claw. And a lot of my more opinionated friends can't believe that I hang around with people like that, but they are red in tooth and claw and they have to be admired. Like you'd admire a tiger or something like that. Just amazing human beings to see. But they're not the sole answer. You wouldn't let them run anything. I have this theory as well that when free market capitalism is let to go unmanaged, right, it then can metastasise, not only through the economy, but it metastasises and infects the political situation. And this is what's happening in the United States.

41:08So I have this theory. It's my own theory. And I presume it's a theory that's related to other theories that are out there, but it's my own. Good cover. Good cover. No, it is, but it's my own feeling. because I've been I've been thinking burnishing it up cooking it up for years and to boil it down to one my point is that America got the leader it ultimately deserved okay and let me I'm applauding okay but let me go back why did it get the leader it deserved because for 250 years it's been slowly warming to the idea of Herr Drumpf Donald Trump arriving how? well because it made a series of rules it said you're free okay we're free you're free to say what you want say what you want can I say what I want anywhere yes say it as much as you want anywhere can I say it on this new thing called TV yeah okay I can yeah am I allowed to say whatever I want yes am I allowed to criticise whoever I want can I call can I insult somebody yes okay alright can I cheat oh yes but we have laws okay but can I hire lawyers unlimited amount of lawyers oh you must hire lawyers this is part of our constitution it's the right to defend yourself can I hire 100 lawyers yes can I hire all the best lawyers and deny the can I intimidate lawyers that if you don't work for me I'll make sure you never work you can it's part of the law you're getting you're kind of finding a loophole there okay what else do you like what else can I do well we love people who make it what do you mean make it well we love people who are seen to make it you mean famous famous people can I become famous yes so what am I going to I'm going to become famous rich say what I want hire all the lawyers in the world can I become as rich as I want yes can I buy everything can I buy everything right can I yes can I get people to build stuff for me yes can I not pay them when they build it no if you have good enough lawyers exactly but can I use the lawyers that I talked about a minute ago to sue those guys back and say I'll only pay a quarter what I get you could right and if you win good luck to you now just one more question can I run for political office yes we have a thing any money any human over 30 were you born here yes I was you can run for office okay can I tell a lie what's a lie I don't know it's what I believe or the truth my truth the suspension of disbelief exactly so that's what we got we got the guy who found all the loopholes lined them up all the loopholes in a perfect storm of shit in the constitution the shitification as they call it these days he lined it all up and then you ended up with this guy called Donald Trump there had been previous incarnations in various different ways people like Ronald Reagan Ronald Reagan was experimenting with the idea can we put a celebrity in charge of the country nah remember it was laughed at and then it did and then we'd Arnold Schwarzenegger and then you'd Arnold Schwarzenegger can you put you know can you put rich people celebrities you know so this is what we ended up with I'm really convinced that that's what's happened and I don't know that's a series of statements of facts yeah they're correct yeah one of the funny or the interesting aspects if this was the word truth that truth social yeah 1984 yeah that's what their brilliance in 1984 was they called it truth you know ministry of truth yeah I know the ministry of truth it's literally come true yeah literally but when when truth becomes the most powerful person in the room says it's true that's that's the issue here so the bully the bully is the truth well the problem is that one of the one of the what do the guards call it lines of inquiry one of the lines of inquiry I'm following is that the truth itself has become really badly damaged by well-intentioned people who thought they were doing the right thing.

44:52And the word that's used for it is noble cause corruption. Yeah. So in my fields to do with the environment and stuff like that, I'm watching huge swathes of things happening that are just not true. But no one's standing up to say it. If you think I got in trouble for stuff I've said about housing, you'll see what happens in the day job that I do. Please say one or two of those things now. I won't touch them. You don't want to say them now? I'll never work again. Really? You won't say them to me now? Never work again. And yet... Well, then I'm to take it. Okay, so for instance... I'm to take it that you have...

45:22I'm to take it that one or two of your views are construed as being controversial by the environmental... I am the environmental thing. I own and run the oldest, biggest environmental consultancy in Ireland. I am that problem, but I am in the middle of that problem saying, this is not true. And I'll give you two parallel examples if you've used the time for. When I used to be... I used to run this department in college. in what's now TU Dublin. And one of the programmes we had was a master's programme called Planning and Development. People would come in who were bankers and they'd learn about planning law and people who were involved in development would learn about banking.

45:59Funny blended thing. It was a very good programme. And one of the students I had was doing their dissertation. I was his dissertation supervisor and he was administering a questionnaire that was based on a series of known predictors for the existence of a property bubble. So he had found a way to boil all this down into a survey. And because of his own seniority in the world of banking, he was able to administer it to other peers of his in the sector. Every single person that he interviewed as a peer all said that, yes, all the conditions of a severe housing bubble already exist in Ireland. All of them.

46:37And then each of them, when he finished the interview, he said, well, if you think that's what's going to happen, why aren't you saying anything about it? I said, because look what I'd be like. I'd be made a fool of. And follow that on with the fact that I, in 2006 or 2007, gave a presentation, because I used to do talks about the future and what the future's going to be like, to this enormous room full of all the bankers. I won't say what bank they were from, but they were all in the room together. And I said, property, it's going to collapse. It's going to lose about 50 to 60 % of its value.

47:05It'll all happen in the next 12 to 18 months, right? And I said, if you don't believe me, you don't have to, but I've sold all my property. You said? I did. And I had, except my house, right? As I was leaving the room, just when I finished, the chair or whatever it was, sort of laughing, said, oh, sure, Conor, if even half of what you said came through, half of this room would have no jobs in 12 months. And then as I was leaving, it was in the basement of the Merion Hotel and there's a kind of corridor as you go in that has these big windows that aren't actually windows, they're just gaps so you can see into the room.

47:38And unbeknownst to him, as I was being led out, I overheard him say to his PA never waste our time with that kind of rubbish again right a couple of years later I was in a pub fierce dig in the ribs turned around this big huge guy was there said oh I got your attention yeah he said you don't remember me do you no he said I was chair of that talk he gave that day he said I've never forgotten it I've been in therapy because of it in fact he said because like everybody else in the room we were told what was going to happen and we did nothing about it and he said I just want to know what you did to my life you know it's the equivalent of what it's the equivalent in political terms of the slow moving coup it sort of happens slowly and then all of a sudden all of a sudden same you're the guy who was in touch about this I did three shows two shows with Matt Cooper with him saying the same thing and saying this is all going to collapse completely collapse it happened very quickly absolute total dog's abuse for saying it grant not unused to that and then a couple of years later same interview same man and I said it's all going to finish really quickly it'll recover really fast.

48:41And I use the analogy of a ping pong ball that had been handled with water, let it go. Absolute madness. You complete mad, Sir Conrad, there you are again. So those kind of factors are very readily predicted. The problem isn't predicting. The problem is getting people to listen. And the problem with listening is an unwillingness to depart from the consensus. So going back into my own field, the one I'm being very careful not to talk too much about, is that there are these verities, these truths, and people hang an immense amount of their identity out of them. So one of the things I learned, you know, I ended up quitting teaching, which I love.

49:15I miss teaching so badly, but I wasn't able to cope with the COVID stuff and I had to just step aside. And one of the things I learned was I would teach people these, again, a master's level. They'd come in and I'd do the introductory course and I had to introduce them to a whole lot of verities about the environment. And what I learned from that is that when you take away somebody's opinions, you're taking away part of their identity. and it's an incredibly crushing thing to do. And I saw myself helping them by sharing facts that clearly contradicted all of these truths they thought they came in with.

49:48So I gave up very quickly. And what I did instead was I would start the first day, big whiteboard, everybody write down on a piece of paper what are the three things about the environment that worry the most that made you come in and want to do this course. Get the piece of paper, chop them up, hand them up to the top of the room, count it, end up with the 40 people in the room, the 40 most pressing problems, and then take the piece of paper back out, give it randomly out of a hat to have been in the room. I said, now your job is to go off and just take that one topic, just that one topic, and you are to research it and make a presentation back to your class.

50:18And the only two rules are you can only use two PowerPoint slides and you must demonstrate that you've gone to the most authoritative source in the world with the longest data set. That was it. And so they did. And week after week after week, they would stand up in front of each other saying, look, this, I don't know how to tell you this, but there is no such thing as peak oil. But the penguins in Antarctica They're all doing just fine. Thanks very much. But, but, but, you know. Okay. Yeah. So what I'm dealing with every day of the week is a whole bunch of people who've got really strong opinions, opinions about the environment and what people should or shouldn't do about it.

50:51And they wouldn't know the environment if it fell on them. You know. In 2007, around 2007, I remember being in a taxi and the taxi driver saying to me, yeah, well, I'm off over the toilet there just to keep annoying me for properties. and they're ah for fuck's sake yeah sell sell everything you have right I just remember thinking this is bollocks and he's allowed to say that why am I allowed to say that you said fuck earlier on but anyway I also remember seeing these articles in the Sunday Independent like all the yummy mummies are heading down to British to join their millionaire banker husbands in their multi-million caravans And I remember thinking, along with the guy that I met in the taxi, I think something is a bit wrong here.

51:42Right. And I'm getting the same feeling from some articles I'm reading now. I think it's always when Irish people are getting notions. We call them notions in this country. And I'm getting a few notions vibes. And I'm wondering, does that mean, is my intelligence telling me we might be heading towards something that might be a little unsavory? Just back to the Brendan O 'Connor conversation, which you interrupted with your fantastic imitation of. So I had said to him that the problem with housing, that more supply won't fix the problem. The problem is the affordability. And that until we address that, and that affordability, again, has a universal all over the world.

52:22That either in terms of rental or in terms of purchase, it should be about three and a half times your income. Roughly, roughly. And if you're there, you're the sweet spot. It's ten at the moment. Yeah, I know. But that's the sweet spot. and that you're addressing that. You address that and not building more houses. Building more houses aren't going to make that any more affordable. But setting out to say, why are our houses so expensive? You can do something about that. You can drill into that and you can incentivize that. So we in this country go on and on, especially some particular political party, about homes for first-time buyers or beloved, right?

52:55In other countries, they call that a starter home. If I buy a starter home in the Netherlands, It has precisely six components, four walls, a roof and a floor. And that's it, boys and girls. I see. A starter home isn't a fully equipped house. No. And Michael and Bridget from Leash who sort of say, well, I'm not moving in this. It's got a€50 ,000 fitted kitchen and a€25 ,000 fitted bathroom and pelmets and curtains and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right. That's, follow, that's not a starter home. So we could have very affordable houses tomorrow morning if local authorities were to say those fields over there, they're far starker homes and a starker home is the following.

53:35And if you build any more than that, you can't have your license or whatever it is. Do it in the morning. Do it in the morning. And then if you added to that the fact that we have this incredible new sets of ways of building things, we call them garden homes, we call them all kinds of stuff, but I call them a factory finished floor, a factory finished home. I was down in Chile years ago and I used to do stuff for the UN and they had this terrible earthquake. appalling earthquake. And they lost a couple of hundred thousand houses. And they had this brilliant Prime Minister who said, rebuilding this is just going to be a licence to print money for every bent builder I've ever met in my life.

54:09That's not going to happen on my watch. Every in Chile is going to have the right to have their house rebuilt on the place it is, where it was, which sounds mad. But they did it because they basically built a little factory on the outskirts of every town and every village. And they'd get your plans, do it all up, build it in timber, break it back down into stuff but go to the back of a truck, go out, lay the foundations, put it back up again. Factory finished housing. And once you've seen a factory finished house, you'll never go back to a handmade one that was done out in the rain on a February afternoon by a guy who had a hangover.

54:40You'll never go near that again. Factory finished houses are incredible things but they look just like an ordinary house but the pieces they're made out of are proper machined and you mass produce the kitchens and the stairs and all the stuff that goes into them. And did you, do you think we're at a kind of a little tipping point at the moment? Huge. Do you? Huge, yeah. Currently, currently, there are estimates that the global value of stocks is now twice the value of global GDP. One is real money and one is not. Well, as Tommy Tiernan often said, all this money, apparently, we owe 17 trillion dollars.

55:21The world owes 17 trillion. Two! The Martians! A man of the back of the moon, yeah. Yeah. I think he's a joke. I loved his routine because his routine went, so I owe money to you, but you owe money to him and he's owed money to her and she owes money to them. Why don't we just go back to the end of the line, find the fella then and fucking kill him? Well, the stocks versus the GDP. Like GDP is real money. Somebody made a real spoon, right? And they bought the real spoon and that increased the value of that particular part of the economy. But the guy betting on the real spoon didn't do anything for anybody.

55:59And it's a type of pollution that's moving now out from housing. It's hit things like energy. The entire world of energy, the entire world's energy has now gone down the same route. Of the financialisation. So we now have wind farms, huge wind farms that are being paid money to not produce. We're seeing ourselves in Ireland talk about spending billions to develop wind out in the North Atlantic that is never, ever, ever going to be even remotely financially viable. But it has been structured in a way to create investment vehicles that are attractive for people to invest in. Yeah, I mean, that's another story.

56:36OK, because it'd be interesting to talk to you about the environment, the thing you don't want to talk about, apparently. Did I say that? You did, yeah. You said, I can't talk about it. I'd kill her now. You can't talk about it. Well, listen, I'll tell you what, we'll leave it there. And I'll talk to Patrick to see if we'll get you publicly cancelled and hanged again. But on the more bright side, we could get you in again to talk about something else because you're a very, very interesting fellow, Conor. And I'm delighted I met you. And obviously, I like the way your brain operates as well. It's very active and fertile.

57:07Yeah, but it's fertile and active. And thank you. And thank you for meeting me. And my thanks to Conor Skeen for coming in and sharing his thoughts with me on the Mario Rosenstock podcast. My thanks to you, as always, for listening. If you can, tell one other person about this podcast if you enjoyed it and encourage them to listen to it. We have so many guests down through the last four years for you to scroll back and have a listen to. Really, really interesting interviews. I hope you'll agree. My thanks to deluxebathrooms.ie. Their super autumn sale is now on blockbuster sale, up to 70 % off Europe's biggest bathroom brands.

57:45Get down there as soon as you can or get online. And that's it for this week from the Mario Rosenstock podcast. We'll see you same time, same place next week.