This summer will see the end of Banks' Drive in Cranmore as the people of Sligo have come to know it. The area with the most unenvied reputation in the town will undergo a transformation from September when the corporation hands it over to a voluntary housing association.
A section of Cranmore estate comprising some 40 houses is included in the plan. A number of houses will be demolished to create space for green areas; others will be completely refurbished. A new community centre and 10 new houses will be built.
It is hoped this will be a turning point for Banks' Drive. It will also be a considerable challenge for the voluntary housing society, the St Pancras Housing Association, as this is the first time it is not starting with a greenfield site but has to turn around an existing "problem estate".
While a physical transformation is badly needed in the section to be taken over, the residents of Cranmore, which includes about 500 houses, have good reason to complain that they have often been unfairly stigmatised.
A recent study of seven local authority housing estates around the State, carried out by the Economic and Social Research Institute and researchers from UCC and NUI Maynooth, was reported in sections of the media as depicting Cranmore as "one of the worst estates in the country".
In fact, the findings were not nearly so sensational. It concluded that the perception that large-scale local authority housing provision in the 1960s and 1970s had "failed" on a wide scale was "excessively negative as an overall judgment", even if it was true for a number of estates. The detailed report, Social Housing in Ireland, A Study of Successes, Failure and Lessons Learned, edited by Tony Fahey of the ESRI, recommended that the provision of social housing should be doubled from the present level of about 4,500 units a year.
Over most of this century between a quarter and a third of house construction in the State was carried out by local authorities. This was cut sharply in the late 1980s and has remained below 10 per cent since. The report recommends that this be reversed to pre-1980s levels.
On specific points relating to Cranmore, the report indicates that it is not in the same "problem" league as those surveyed in cities. "Minority behaviour patterns that upset residents in Cranmore and give the estate a pervasive bad name around Sligo appear mild when compared to what happens in estates in Dublin and Cork," it states.
Mr Fahey told The Irish Times he was "appalled" by media coverage of the report and said the seven estates were chosen as a cross-section of local authority housing around the State. "The whole point was to say that the vast majority of public housing has been very successful," he said. "There are an awful lot of good things going on in Cranmore. There is a lot of good basic housing and the community is very active." The report points out that big differences can exist even within one estate and this is true of Cranmore, where the Banks' Drive section has "fallen into decline and is widely regarded as a blight on the estate". It was also found that some elderly residents in Cranmore felt harassed by young boys playing on the streets.
As a general rule around the State it was found that people would live in poor buildings if the quality of community/neighbourhood life was good, but would not live in good buildings if they considered the community/neighbourhood life to be poor.
It says, however, that "even in the worst estates, residents speak highly of the friendliness, supportiveness and basic decency of the majority of their neighbours". The biggest problem was the presence of a small number of people regarded as "troublemakers" who engaged in antisocial behaviour. This ranged from harassment and vandalism to drug-dealing, although in the estates outside Dublin hard drugs were not widely used or available.
The survey found a widespread unhappiness at the effectiveness of the Garda and local authorities in managing social disorder, but the authors warn against simply evicting or excluding "problem" tenants as "a one-dimensional and short-term response to a deeper social need". Coping with these kind of problems will be one of the main tasks facing Mr John McGowan, the St Pancras manager for the north-west. He says St Pancras would not have gone into Banks' Drive if it did not believe they could make a difference. It already has one success in Sligo, the newly-built Glendallon estate.
"By the time we are finished, the houses in Banks' Drive will be the best in the estate. We already have about 25 people on a waiting list who want to move in," Mr McGowan says.
As a housing association, St Pancras has been able to get funding not available to Sligo Corporation. And it will bring a different approach to selecting tenants and managing the estate. The aim is to involve local people as much as possible and to help to build up a community spirit. Anybody moving into the estate will have to attend a pretenancy course.
The residents who remain in Banks' Drive - most of the houses are vacant - are keen for work to start. The conditions they endure now are dismal and depressing. Bricked-up houses dominate the estate.
Residents say that once a house is vacated it is usually vandalised and that some are rat-infested. The drab pebbledash fronts have become discoloured over years of neglect.
A St Pancras report describes it: "The continuous unbroken terracing creates a sense of monotony and of being closed in by concrete." As John McGowan walks around the estate, a middle-aged woman approaches him to ask when the work will start. "Don't tell me you're going to leave me here much longer. It's really getting me down," she says.
Community workers in Banks' Drive say some of the problems have been exaggerated. "Ninety-nine per cent of the people here are fantastic. There is a really good community spirit and people are just doing their best to bring up their kids in an ugly area," said one.
In overall terms, Cranmore is far from the "bad area" it is often described as. While unemployment is as high as 70 per cent in some areas, this falls to below 20 per cent in other parts. It has a very high tenant-purchase rate - 50 per cent.
Sligo Corporation recently appointed an estate officer, the first such post in the region. Mr Des McGarry says he is the first point of contact for residents with problems, either relating to the upkeep of houses or difficulties between neighbours. A multi-agency task force for Cranmore has also been set up.
Mr McGarry says a new jobs initiative project run through FAS has also made a big difference to the estate. Nine people, working full-time and on three-year contracts, have been assigned to the estate. Some will work in childcare or with the elderly, while others do basic maintenance work to improve the appearance of the area. Additional funding is also coming to the estate through the Department of Health's Springboard family support initiative.