The rich and the homes of the poor

Sir, – I agree with the overall point made by David McWilliams (“Ireland’s rich have bought up the homes of its poor”, Opinion, May 4th) that we need to suppress land-value inflation and increase supply of housing. But the phenomenon he observes, of people on relatively high incomes living in houses originally built as social housing for the working class, is not straightforwardly a function of under-supply.

My native Marino was a magnificent effort by Dublin Corporation (as it then was) to create a livable community for working class people, reflecting the principles of the Garden City Movement. The socioeconomic status of new residents has changed enormously even over the course of my lifetime, so it seems like a prime example of what David McWilliams describes.

But solicitors and computer programmers are not buying in Marino just because they can’t afford a bigger house elsewhere. Marino is within walking distance of the city centre, the seafront and several parks, has access to a dozen bus routes and the Dart, and boasts excellent schools and thriving local businesses and community facilities. Once the houses were offered for private sale (as many were from the beginning), it was implausible that such a desirable location would be spared the tide of gentrification, no matter how many more houses we build in the capital’s rolling western suburbs. I suspect the same goes for places like Cabra, Kilmainham and Ringsend.

Of course there is under-supply of housing, and of course we need to build more – including appropriately-dense infill of brownfield sites in the sorts of mature residential areas I’m talking about. But, alas, I would not expect this to radically change the profile of new residents in many of these areas, back to the predominantly working-class occupants intended by the builders a century ago. The inner suburbs of Dublin simply are highly attractive on their own terms to the sort of professional couple described by David McWilliams, particularly given the average-sized family in Ireland today would fit far more comfortably in a three-bed terraced house than its original occupants would have. – Yours, etc,

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ALAN EUSTACE,

Marino,

Dublin 9.