Now showing 1 - 10 of 12
  • Publication
    Strengthening communities, building capacity, combating stigma: exploring the potential of culture-led social housing regeneration
    (Taylor and Francis, 2015-09-25) ;
    Culture-led regeneration has long been recognised as a mechanism of re-branding declining urban areas by providing cultural infrastructure, such as museums, galleries and theatres. Whilst often lauded for its potential to economically regenerate cities, the model has shown to have a less positive impact on marginalised households and neighbourhoods. This article explores the utilisation of culture-led regeneration in three disadvantaged Irish social housing estates and finds that it did generate benefits, but not the economic ones predicted by the main authors in this field. Rather its benefits were primarily social – it helped to combat stigmatisation, build local capacity and improve community cohesion. Levels of community participation in cultural activities were very strong in two of the case study neighbourhoods, but much weaker in the third less generously resourced neighbourhood, which raises questions about the levels of investment needed to ensure success and the long-term sustainability of these programmes.
    Scopus© Citations 5  497
  • Publication
    Pro-cyclical social housing and the crisis of Irish housing policy: marketization, social housing and the property boom and bust
    (Taylor & Francis, 2017-03-01) ;
    This article analyzes the role of social housing in Ireland’s property bubble and its experience of the global financial crisis. The article argues that over recent decades social housing has been transformed from a countercyclical measure which counterbalances the market into a procyclical measure which fuelled Ireland’s housing boom. The reform of social housing financing and acquisition mechanisms has embedded social housing in the boom/bust dynamics of the private housing system. Analyzing the shifting relationship between social and private housing is crucial to understanding the role of housing policy in Ireland’s property bubble as well as the current housing crisis. Despite being caused by problems in the private housing and financial systems, the crisis has had very negative consequences for social housing, thus producing a crisis across the housing system as a whole.
      879Scopus© Citations 39
  • Publication
    From asset based welfare to welfare housing? The changing function of social housing in Ireland
    (Routledge, 2011) ;
    This article examines a distinctive and significant aspect of social housing in Ireland – its change in function from an asset-based role in welfare support to a more standard model of welfare housing. It outlines the nationalist and agrarian drivers which expanded the initial role of social housing beyond the goal of improving housing conditions for the poor towards the goal of extending home ownership and assesses whether this focus made it more similar to the ‘asset based welfare’ approach to housing found in south-east Asia than to social housing in western Europe. From the mid-1980s, the role of Irish social housing changed as the sector contracted and evolved towards the model of welfare housing now found in many other western countries. Policy makers have struggled to address the implications of this transition and vestiges of social housing’s traditional function are still evident, consequently the boundaries between social housing, private renting and home ownership in Ireland have grown increasingly nebulous.
    Scopus© Citations 29  22037
  • Publication
    Privatising Public Housing Redevelopment: grassroots resistance, co-operation and devastation in three Dublin neighbourhoods
    (University College Dublin. Geary Institute, 2016-02) ;
    This paper examines variations in residents' responses to proposals to redevelop three public housing neighbourhoods in Dublin using Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) and the outcomes their resistance achieved. In two of these neighbourhoods community representative structures were strong and although one community co-operated with the PPP plans and the other opposed them, both were broadly successful in achieving their campaign objectives. Community structures in the third case-study area were weak however and the imposition of PPP redevelopment devastated this neighbourhood which is now almost entirely vacant. This case study is employed to critique the literature on grassroots resistance to urban redevelopment and welfare state restructuring and social housing development policy in Ireland. The paper concludes that, contrary to many researchers’ assumptions, residents' political action and resistance can significantly influence on public housing redevelopment strategies despite the dominance of neoliberal and entrepreneurial governance regimes. However, for vulnerable communities were representative structures are weak, the over-emphasis on gentrification/ social mixing and refurbishing the built environment in Irish public housing development policy can have devastating consequences. Indeed, demolition and rebuilding programmes in particular can destabilise target neighbourhoods to the extent that the residents who ultimately enjoy the benefits of public housing redevelopment are largely or entirely different from those who campaigned for its instigation.
      375
  • Publication
    Funding incentives, disincentives and vulnerabilities in the Irish council housing sector
    (Taylor & Francis, 2020-01-21) ;
    This article examines the incentives and vulnerabilities generated by arrangements for funding local government-provided social housing in Ireland (aka council housing). These arrangements are unusual in a Western European context because the capital costs of providing this housing are almost entirely covered by central government grants, rather than non-governmental debt finance as is the norm elsewhere. Furthermore, no housing allowances are provided to council tenants in Ireland; rather affordability is ensured by charging rents which are linked (progressively) to tenants’ incomes. Although the character and development of Irish council housing has of course been shaped by macro level political, ideological, social and economic factors, the argument offered here is that funding arrangements have also exerted a strong independent influence. These arrangements render Irish council housing more vulnerable to retrenchment and residualization than the social housing funding arrangements used in most other Western European countries.
      170
  • Publication
    Social Housing
    (Institute of Public Administration, 2006-06-07)
    This chapter sketches the most significant trends in the development of the social housing provision in this country from the mid 1800s, until the contemporary period. The opening part of the chapter examines the early housing legislation; explains how it shaped the system of social housing provision and assesses the contribution which social housing providers made to addressing housing need in urban and rural areas. In the second part of the chapter, a more in-depth examination of the development of the social housing sector during the last two decades is presented. This section concentrates on efforts to diversify the methods of providing social housing and the increasing focus on the part of central government on qualitative issues such as efficient housing management and the regeneration of difficult-to-let social rented estates, in addition to its traditional quantitative concern of ensuring that supply of social housing matches need. On the basis of this dis cussion, the concluding comments to the chapter quantify the achievements of the social housing sector in Ireland and identify some of the key questions facing the sector at the current time.
      803
  • Publication
    Reforming Local Authority Housing Management: The Case of Tenant Participation in Estate Management
    (Institute of Public Administration, 2006-06-07)
    For most of the period since the tenure was founded in the late 19 th century, the manage ment of local authority housing has been neglected by both central and local government. From the perspective of the former, new house building rather than management, has traditionally been the overriding concern. This attitude is not surprising in view of Ireland’s housing conditions which, until recent years, have compared unfavourably to other European Union (EU) countries both in terms of housing standards and number of dwellings per head (European Union, 2002). Nor is it atypical in the wider Europ ean context where central government influence on social housing has traditionally been exercised mainly by means of capital contributions to building costs, which has limited its control over and interest in housing management (Cole and Furbey, 1994). Ho wever, Ireland is unusual in the extent to which the main providers of social housing, have devoted scant attention to its management. This oversight on the part of local authorities is linked to the introduction of the tenant purchase schemes in the 1930 s in rural areas and the 1960s in urban areas (Fahey, 1998b). The high rate of privatisation required very limited management capacity from housing departments, whose responsibilities have traditionally not stretched far beyond allocating new dwellings an d collecting the rent for the couple of years before tenants exercise their right to buy (O’Connell, 1999).
      494
  • Publication
    Combating social disadvantage in social housing estates: the policy implications of a ten year follow up study
    (Combat Poverty Agency/Department of Social Protection, 2011-06) ; ; ;
    This paper presents a policy-focused report on the research project 'Progress and Problems in Social Housing Estates: A ten-year follow-up study'. The project was carried out between late 2007 and early 2009 in seven local authority housing estates in Ireland and took the form of a follow-up to a study of the same estates which had been carried out in the period 1997-1999. The seven estates examined in the study are: Fatima Mansions and Finglas South in Dublin City; Fettercairn, Tallaght, in South County Dublin; Deanrock estate in Togher, Cork City; Moyross in Limerick City; Muirhevnamor in Dundalk and Cranmore in Sligo town
      809
  • Publication
    Financing the Golden Age of Irish Social Housing, 1932-1956 (and the dark ages which followed)
    (University College Dublin, 2018-10-20)
    The period from the early 1930s to mid-1950s was the golden age of social housing in the Republic of Ireland. During these three decades social housing accounted for 55 per cent of all new housing built and the proportion of Irish households accommodated in this sector increased to an all-time high of 18.6 per cent by 1961. Unlike the rest of Western Europe the expansion of Ireland’s social housing sector did not coincide with a golden age of welfare state expansion. Indeed the Ireland’s social housing sector began to stagnate and contract just as its welfare state commenced a late blossoming in the 1970s. This paper looks to financing arrangements to shed light on these atypical patterns of social housing sector expansion and contraction. The argument offered here is that initially the arrangements used to fund social housing in Ireland were very similar to those used in the other Western European countries which constructed large social housing sectors during the twentieth century. However, as this century wore on, the influence of the socio-political pressures which has constrained the growth of the wider Irish welfare state came to bear on the model used to fund social housing and precipitated the end of its golden age.
      257
  • Publication
    Housing Market Volatility,Stability and Social Rented Housing: comparing Austria and Ireland during the global financial crisis
    (University College Dublin. Geary Institute, 2017-02-26) ;
    Since the 1970s the prevalence and duration of housing market booms has increased in developed countries as has the busts which followed them. These developments and particularly their occurrence in a large number of countries simultaneously were key contributors to the global financial crisis of 2008. The literature on this crisis has focused primarily on the role of mortgage markets and home-ownership in driving housing booms and busts and also on the countries which have experienced the strongest busts, particularly in the English-speaking world. Despite the large number of social rented dwellings in Western Europe, the role of this sector has been largely neglected in the literature. This paper aims to address these omissions by the interaction of social housing and the housing market in Ireland, which experienced a specular housing market boom in the 1990s and strong bust in the 2000s and Austria which has a long tradition of housing market stability. It argues that social housing played a central but contrasting role shaping the housing market dynamics in these two countries. In Ireland social housing was pro-cyclical – it accelerated the housing market boom and intensified the bust - whereas Austrian social housing had a counter cyclical impact on the housing market and thereby helped to promote price stability. These outcomes were partially reflected in the different social housing policy regimes in use in these countries - Austria represents a 'unitary' and Ireland a 'dualist' housing regime in housing regime in Kemeny's (1995) typology. In addition, the sources of finance for social housing and the use of demand-side or supply-side subsidies were also important drivers of these contrasting outcomes.
      690