Dublin's twentieth-century social housing policies: tenure, ‘reserved areas’ and housing type

At the start of the twentieth century, Dublin city's slums bore comparison to those of Calcutta. The last inner city slums were finally cleared in the 1980s. This paper takes a long-term perspective to examine the key features of local authority housing policy over these decades. We explore three key policy instruments (tenure, housing type and the provision of ‘reserved areas’), detailing for the first time how and why they evolved. Both parallels and contrasts with the UK experience are identified. We argue that the varying approaches to tenure reflect shifting government funding regimes and were not ideologically driven. One result was two phases of housing stock sell-off to sitting tenants. Ongoing internal debate concerning the balance between flats and houses resulted in periodic changes in the type of dwellings provided. ‘Reserved areas’, a serendipitous response to a financing problem in the 1920s, remained a consistent policy instrument over the years. This led to increased social mixing and a varied appearance within housing schemes. We demonstrate that the combination of these three elements created Dublin's distinctive social housing landscape with its low-rise, low-density footprint.