Social housing in the estate

Ask the estate agent, when we were looking a few years ago the agent had no problem telling me exactly which houses were social.

Personal experience here: lived for a year in a development with no social housing - it was really great. Very tidy, kids monitored when they played outside etc.

After a year, a large block of social housing opened. Generally, it's fine. Some issues with kids not supervised, some minor vandalism, a good bit of littering. But it's by no means a kip or anything. And that was with maybe 30+ social dwellings added to a development of maybe 80 other houses. Most of the issues are probably coming from a couple of those families. There have been a few unpleasant events - for example the criminal ex-boyfriend(?) of someone in the social housing went into the underground car park and smashed up about 20 cars one night. There seem to be ambulances and fire engines called out quite a lot for some reason, and the Gardai are frequently seen parked outside the dwellings, but I've no idea why - could just be welfare checks or something.

TLDR the social housing brought a few issues, but it's not a disaster by any means.

I'm not 100% sure what you mean, but when we were looking at houses on another new build estate, the estate agents were able to tell us which houses were going to be social housing. In our case, the social housing element must have come on stream around 2018, about a year after we moved in.

OP if you go onto the planning portal and read though the documents for your estate there will normally be one site plan drawing showing which houses are going to be Part 5 or Part V, developers need to tell the council this to get planning but this will only layout the minimum required social housing, nothing to stop the council buying up another 50% of the houses if they want.

I grew up in social housing (council estate) and I think people are right to be worried about the level of social housing in an estate. Most of the people in the estate were decent people. I would say about 5% of the houses in the estate were very problematic, there was a further certain percentage who were not as bad but could also cause problems. They made everyone else's life a misery. But not at the beginning, I think that is what many here are possibly misunderstanding.

It is not as such the high level dramatic stuff, it is the small things when the kids get a bit older. As some here have mentioned, it is very difficult to evict families if they are in a council house, no matter the trouble they cause in the estate. If kids are continuously throwing stones at your window or scratching the car and the parents don't care, what do you think happens? Nothing. There is literally nothing you can do if you are being targeted by the kids in the estate.

Over the years some families were doing a lot better than others and this is where the resentment starts to come in. If someone got a new car, there would be stones thrown at it, that type of thing. After I left at around 19, my parents moved out a couple of years later as there was no peace in the estate. I would imagine this situation would be even worse in a mixed private and social estate, where the gap between have and have-not will be greater. Of course, you won't see any of this for more than 10 years.

It really depends on who they move into the estate, is it a lot of people who are not working? Who is getting prioritised for social housing? In theory it could work, if problem families had to face consequences for their own and their children's behaviour, but it's Ireland, they don't and they never will. It is also true that you could have a bad private neighbour, but it is much less likely. I think people use this as a coping mechanism as they have no control over the social housing situation in the estate.

There were plenty of people in what you call traditional council houses who couldn't be bothered looking after the area. There were some "lifetime dole'ers" in the 80's and 90's too, but I think it would not have been anything like the level we have now. It was also very much looked down on, I don't know if you can say the same now.

Anyway, it was just my 2 cents. I think a lot of the posters on here are fairly naive about what can happen.When I lived there, if there were kids outside throwing things I would go out and chase them away (as a teenager). I am not sure if the innocent little lambs, with their middle class upbringing, would be happy sending their teenage son out.

As a general rule, try to avoid being near somewhere that kids would naturally hang around, like a lane way, or end house with a small wall and you will probably save yourself some bother.

Any new build estate over a certain number of houses will have a number of social housing units allocated. You also don't know then if the council is going to jump in and try and get a few more of these units. 20 percent now going to be the minimum standard, absolute farce. My advice to anyone asking is always to avoid these new estates because of the risk involved.

I'd avoid new build estates in general, not just because of this issue, but all these new build estates are going to have gangs of teenagers running around in 15 years because everyone in them is at similar ages and similar parts of their life cycle. Even the ones from better behaved families are going to be up to no good given the huge group of them that will exist.

Better to look at a mature estate with drastically different ages, with more staggered development of families.

Avoid any houses near any obvious congregating areas. Make multiple visits at night before you buy, especially on weekends.

You essentially have to be unemployed to be under the income limit for social housing, as two adults on minimum wage anywhere in Ireland has you over the income limit. So this misconception about modern social housing applicants being these hard working unlucky sorts is just nonsense.

So you're going to very likely be living next to a lifetime doler, with tons of children. Those children are going to get older and become teenagers. Teenagers are trouble, children of lifetime dolers are a whole other breed of trouble. And that's before you consider some other people that you could be living beside.

Social housing tenants are infact very hard to evict, because if they are somehow thrown out, the council still has the burden of housing them, so the councils don't want to know. They just don't care.

Of course you could get a decent social housing tenant, but, one thing you know is that if you buy beside another legitimate buyer, they at least had to work hard to get the money to get the property, and should take some pride in it given they actually own it. If you ever try to sell your property and your neighbour has a broken down car and weeds all over the lawn potential buyers will run a mile.

Sure, I understand it from the other perspective and I understand there are decent people. However the income limits basically near guarantee a certain profile of social housing applicant in 2023.

Better off taking your chance next to a neighbour who has paid for their house, who has shown an ability to get up 5 days a week early in the morning, work hard and come home. Off course you'll get a few bad apples in that group but far less likely to have them vs the unemployed types waiting for their forever home.

The days of moving up the housing ladder are dying, most people buying now are getting on the ladder and that's that. People have to sacrifice years trying to save for a home, better that they know exactly the situation they are getting into. This is 300,000k + we are talking about, let other people be the virtue signallers and try to improve communities, you make sure you have a house free from trouble for the next 50 years.

Tons of estates where there is barely any to no social housing, given that social housing was traditionally kept together. Sure the council might buy a one off here or there but far better off taking chances in a more mature estate.

Those mature estates will have drastically different age profiles too, which is a huge benefit given there won't be gangs of teenagers taking over the place in 15 years time, there will be enough of a spread in ages that it should remain a relatively quiet place.

20 percent of all estates is an absolute farce too, regardless of anybodies well wishes. Can you imagine being so much of an idiot that you pay 400-500k for a home in a 100 home estate when 20 homes are basically for free to people who don't work with a miniscule rent payment on them?

I guarantee, absolutely guarantee that people moving into these new builds will all be complaining about the social issues in 15 years.