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Estates of Fear
Inept decision-makers ignore the wishes and interests of local authority tenants. By Mannix Flynn. Ireland’s Attitude to Social Housing Let’s be clear, thou gh the middle classes could not care less, tenants in our local authority estates have rights. A few years a o it was reported that localauthorities had received 10,000 complaints about anti-social behaviour in just two years, 2015 and 2016. It’s an ong oing crisis. But only for those who live in the flats. You could easily miss this timebomb because the general view is that Council estates are the sinks of our society. This is partly because somuch of housing policy obsesses over how to facilitate private development and private reward. The unnecessary bifurcation between ownership classes for housing is deep-rooted and lon g-standing ; and drives the self-image of far too many. It ownership classes for housing is deep-rooted and long-standing; and drives the self-image of far too many. It also affects construction. As long ago as the report ‘Housing Conditions of the Working Classes in the City of Dublin’ concluded 14,000 new homes needed to be built to rehouse slum dwellers. Crucially this building programme needed to be undertaken by the State because the private sector had not made itself available to “any appreciable degree sufficient to grapple with the present needs of the city”. Inadequate supply of social housing remains an indictment of our society. There are at least 70,000 on social housing lists. But there are other age-old problems. The same report said there needed to be better enforcement of the laws in relation to rented accommodation. That’s a hundred years ago! A 2010 report criticised “housing managementpolicies that make enabling tenant purchase the priority”, to the detriment of quality, amenities and relationships. We don’t get social housing inIreland. Never have. It’s very diff erent elsewhere. In Vienna 62%live in social housing, good-quality social housing. The Legacy Anyway on we go, building sinks, ever since, from the grand scale of Herbert Simms through the 1966 Housing Act and a burst of high-riseincluding the 3,000-unit Ballymun development with disastrously diverted physical and social infrastructure to sprawling 1970s houses in desolate new towns to the limited vision over the last few decades of Part V and 10% allocations of social housing in, or sometimes away from, private housing developments. The quality and conditions are grim for those in the Ghetto. In the Inner City many of the flats are slums. Ordinary people feel abandoned, unsafe, distant from a regime they see as Stalinist. Mostly they feel fear There is a correlation between growing up ghettoised in a slum and dysfunctional behaviour. Ordinary people feel abandoned, unsafe, distantfrom a regime they see as Stalinist. Mostly they feel fear. Fear every day. Dysfunctionality from crime and poor conditions overflows into the inner city generally. Families and elderly people don’t go into the city any more. The multi-agencies that are supposed to be looking after the welfare of the homeless and the addicted fill their own coffers like Christmas. The Council and all the political parties including FFG, People Before Profit and Sinn Féin but also NGOs and community activists have abandoned the flats. Eoin O’Broin writes about a Tiocfaidh ár Lá dee daw utopia of social housing everywhere but people in the ghetto want safety first. Where is Amnesty’s Colm O’Gorman on the breaches of civil liberties for those abandoned in fear in the flats? God knows there must be a judicial review in it for those who bed down amid the mould and vermin. There are certainly enough Acts that are suppose to cover it. Worthy report after report is forgotten by the middle-class worthies paid to churn them out. Nothing ever changes. Social Housing Figures As to social housing, only 9% of Ireland’s housing stock is social housing compared to the European average of 20%. In 2017, there were 24,000Dublin City Council tenants paying more than €78 million in rent. On average, tenants paid €272 per month. You wouldn’t know they pay anything, the way they are abandoned by civil servants and Garda who live miles away, to anti-social behaviour. Anti-Social Behaviour This is defined under the Criminal Justice Act 2016: “A person behaves in an antisocial manner if the person causes or, in the circumstances, islikely to cause, to one or more persons who are not of the same household as the person –Harassment,Significant or persistent alarm, distress, fear orintimidation, orSignificant or persistent impairment of their useor enjoyment of their property”. Anti-social behaviour fails to describe what people are facing day and night in local authority estates, the place they call home – and withoutany help in the event of abuse. When drug lords shoot a lad dead in Gloucester Place or Sheriff St who picks up the pieces? Who deals with theterror residents feel passing the spot every day? It’s not as if anyone provides counselling. The knotweed of this criminality euphemised as anti-social behaviour is tightening its deathly grasp all over the city. A 2019 University of Limerick report found that only a relatively small number of people in social housing (estimated at under 2% between theages of 12 and 40) are involved in criminal and anti-social behaviour, but that their actions were having a continuing corrosive and damagingimpact on a far greater number. Up to 1000 kids, mostly from “chaotic” family backgrounds are groomed into criminal activities Crime in Social Housing Figures A third of Irish people say crime and anti-social behaviour in their community has had an impact on their quality of life. In Dublin the figure rises to four in ten residents who feel their lives have been negatively affected. As of 2018 Dublin’s north inner city had the highest crime rate in the State at over five times the national average. The Dublin North Centraldivision had the highest rate for 11 of the 14 main crime categories, including homicide, sexual offences, assaults, drug crime and public orderoffences, and had the second highest rate in the remaining three. The North
