Republican News · Thursday 23 January 1997

[An Phoblacht]

Snobbery deepens Dublin housing crisis

By Mícheál MacDonncha

Some residents have objected to the purchase of houses by Dublin Corporation in their estates and certain councillors are trying to win their favour in a cynical vote-catching exercise.

The Property supplement of the Irish Times last week carried a front page feature on the three ``most interesting properties to come on the market in the first week of the new selling season''. The three large 19th century houses in Ranelagh and Rathmines were given an estimated combined value of well over a million pounds.

In the first half of 1996 eleven houses costing between £850,000 and £1.55 million were sold in Dublin. ``A season for millionaires'' ran the Property supplement headline on that occasion. At the top end of the housing scale in the capital demand is high and the wealthy are competing for the prime properties. They suffer no housing shortage; for them it is prestige which is at a premium.

But there is a housing shortage in Dublin. With 5000 people on Dublin Corporation's housing waiting list, 6000 on the transfer list and 2000 people awaiting senior citizens' accommodation, that housing shortage is acute. It is the unemployed, the low paid, lone parents and the elderly who are facing the crisis of sub-standard accommodation or no accommodation at all.

One of the ways the Corporation is trying to alleviate the shortage is through a scheme of `social integration'. The local authority buys houses in `private' estates and provides them to tenants. Because of the limited nature of the scheme it is only those families most in need who are benefitting.

The scheme has come about principally because of the depletion of Dublin Corporation's housing stock. Tenant purchase schemes have meant that most of the old Corporation housing, apart from inner city flats complexes, is now in the private sector. The sale of sites which should have been used for housing made a fast buck for the Corporation in the 1980s. But the result today is a shortage of land for public housing.

One would have thought therefore that the priority of all Dublin city councillors would be the alleviation of this shortage. Not so. At a meeting of the Housing Committee of Dublin Corporation last December Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil councillors pushed through a motion which sought a restriction of £65,000 on the value of private houses bought by the Corporation for its tenants.

It was political opportunism and not cost-cutting that prompted this move. The Corporation actually has the money available to it from the Department of the Environment. But since some residents have objected to the purchase and letting of houses by the Corporation in their estates, certain councillors and TDs have been trying to win favour with them in a cynical vote-catching exercise.

``Snobbery, pure snobbery,'' is how Sinn Féin Councillor Christy Burke describes the attitude of some politicians and residents to the Corporation purchases. A number of his North Inner City constituents have been housed under the scheme, including one family which lived in an overcrowded flat in Hardwicke Street and were 20 years on the waiting list seeking better accommodation. Now they have a house in Ashington, an estate in Cabra where controversy on the Corporation purchase scheme has been whipped up, notably by Fine Gael Councillor John Kearney.

The snobbery of some residents has led to the usual catch-call about the price of their property falling. They claim that it is not the people who are moving in they object to but the principle of the Corporation buying houses in `private' estates. This is despite the restrictions on the scheme. The Corporation can buy only one in 50 houses on any private estate in any one year and not more than one in every ten houses on the same road.

Begrudgery is also a feature of the opposition. Some residents cite the fact that they had to work hard to get their mortgages and are making high repayments while Corporation tenants pay low rents. But if it is not the presence of tenants in their estates that the residents object to then this is simply an argument against any public housing.

``Some opponents of the scheme say they fear the type of tenants that may move in,'' says Christy Burke. ``But the fact is if you live in a private estate you have no control over who buys a house next to you. It could be a major drugs criminal for example. And many of the big drug bosses live on private estates. But Corporation tenants are subject to conditions of tenancy and if they are anti-social their neighbours can proceed to have them moved.''

Christy Burke says the people he has seen rehoused in Ashington and elsewhere through the Corporation scheme ``have proven to be excellent tenants''. This is clearly not good enough for Labour Councillor Joe Connolly of Crumlin. He has called publicly for tenants selected for the scheme to be forced to go through ``a course of training to learn how to live within these estates and be of a friendly and neighbourly nature''.

The Association of Combined Residents Associations (ACRA) has come out against the housing scheme. A delegate meeting last December called for its abandonment. ACRA General Secretary Eamon McArthur denied to An Phoblacht that the policy was promoting snobbery. He cited ``lack of consultation'' with residents in estates as one of the reasons for opposition. This issue was raised at Dublin City Council when Fianna Fáil Councillor Tony Taafe asked the City Manager that consultation take place. The City Manager replied that such consultations or negotiations could lead to sellers of houses withdrawing due to long delays or coming under pressure from residents opposed to sale to the Corporation. He might have added that there is no requirement for private individuals to consult with locals when buying houses.

Efforts to stop the scheme or restrict to £65,000 the value of houses the Corporation can buy, have failed so far. But out on the estates fears and prejudices are being used to make political capital. In the run-up to the general election campaign the issue is likely to be further manipulated by opponents of Corporation housing and the councillors who pander to them.

``Some of these councillors are not fit to represent anyone,'' says Sinn Féin Councillor Christy Burke. ``They have no right to penalise people just because unemployment has meant that they are badly housed. This scheme has my total support. People have a right to be housed. It's as simple as that.''

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