A Landlord's Life

The urban-scape of Dublin and regional cities has been transformed by the building boom of the past 15 years.

It is worth remembering the dereliction that characterised the "inner cities" of our little Republic, more like Cold War bomb sites than modern urban habitations. Visitors could not understand when I told them "Southern Ireland" had not been in the Second World War - they assumed we were in (late) post-war bomb clearance.

It took tax breaks Section 23/27 for developers to bring their money back from British cities where it had been doing what it might have done at home - had the political nous been there. Better late than never, I suppose - 40 years after the Gallaghers and Durkans, Murphys and McNicholas had laid the concrete foundation for MacMillan's never-had-it-so-good Britons.

All that is by way of saying that when regeneration did start here during the 1980s, it made some dents in local culture. Most of the sites were sold by Dublin Corporation, the leading impresario of dereliction in the capital.

The Corpo ownership harked back to strokes of pen in Dublin Castle after the hand-over of political power from the British Empire to the emergent Free State, but little had been done with them in the "gap" of 50 years.

The developers moved into sites which were often next to local authority flats. Resentment was bound to occur, as the incumbents of Aul Dubalin watched the new apartments rise behind electronic gates: smarter, glitzier and better built than their own Corpo homes.

No street parties to welcome the new residents, rather ritual burning of their cars, theft of their belongings and general harassment. A family from Bray spent two days decorating a new apartment for their daughter and went to the pub on the corner to meet locals and "integrate" into the community. When they returned, their apartment had been entirely stripped - new furniture and kitchen goods, the lot gone . . .

The electronic gates were no defence, as the 10-year-olds from the Flats had worked out the codes. When zappers were introduced, the kids blocked the locks with chewing-gum. Young professional women - the major purchasers of the apartments - ran the gauntlet from underground car-park to apartment and locked themselves inside. Many sold up after months and moved further out to the suburbs or to a "safer" part of the city.

The point is, they left with profit. Between their purchase off-plans about a year before and abandonment of the completed apartment, a handsome profit was gained.

It was of course the start of the boom. Year-on-year since then - about 15 years ago - those apartments have steadily increased in value, with no shortage of buyers.

One of those "siege" apartments would set you back about 210K today, even though it was first bought for the punt equivalent of about 50K. So, in spite of vandalism, repeated thefts and harassment, the apartments have fulfilled their original role of providing homes for young owner-occupiers and given them the profit-taking to move further up the so-called property ladder.

In many cases, the purchase had allowed a young woman to bring equity - in every sense - to the purchase of a substantial family home in a desirable suburb.

By being a property owner she developed expertise you cannot learn from a text book or academic lecture. Multiply her experience by the thousands - possibly hundreds of thousands - and you have a snapshot of those who drove the boom, the property-owning class that has emerged for the first time in this State since the pens were busily transferring property rights in Dublin Castle in 1923, tidying up a Revolution fought in the main by the "men of no property".

Thus endeth the Lesson . . .

Fast forward 80 years to the tenants in the Corpo flats across the way, who gave such a rough welcome to the new arrivals. I passed by both blocks the other day. A technician was working on the electronic gates of the apartments, as another generation of youngsters learned the digital basics of modern vandalism.

The Corpo flats seemed even more neglected, prize samples of civic squalor. I understand Dublin City Council is still debating whether to demolish or refurbish.

Whatever decision is made will not affect the boys who did the locks of the newer apartments 15 years ago. Many are in The Joy, one violently dead, while their younger brothers are headed that way.

I don't know what The Corpo did with the money it got from selling the site to the developer. I am only a Landlord.