ash1
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thanks for your posts – i sometimes think lunatics have taken over the asylum down here.
the problem with community action is that you need the community, and they have become so fragmented. And who do you take to task? within a couple of hundred yards of my parents home (off gracious georgian o’connell ave) there is a ‘wet hostel’, a resettlement unit for delinquent teenage travellers, a halfway house for young offenders (original planning permission granted for a ‘child development clinic’ ) and a further adult offenders hostel – one of whose occupants was recently sentenced for the murder of a barman in ’04. all concentrated in the space of 15 or so houses.All of these are operated by many different ‘not for profit’ organistations – who are then able to pick up properties cheap as chips as neighbouring residents leave in droves. None of these projects have live in wardens. The ‘rent allowance’ payments alone have allowed one ‘saintly’ charity to build up an impressive multimillion property portfolio in dooradoyle and raheen. Urban myth or truth but there are reports that they have even gone door to door in some estates asking if their owners are interested in selling! you can imagine the blind panic that sets in.
It’s this kind of systematic undermining of social networks which is responsible for the ghetto which is springing behind the facade of all this new building. High density apartment blocks with a high churn of occupants with no emotional ties or financial investment to an area do not communities make. There is a real danger of creating new ‘no go’ areas in the city centre, where only the foolish or insane will choose to live from choice, and others only from necessity.
i am begining to think that ‘impact statements’ should be part of the planning process – i.e. what benefits will this development bring to the area – or that new build permission will only be granted for owner occupiers ,with a codicil that they cannot sell for a stated period of time – or ‘peppercorn’ type mixed developments of single / family housing – to create stability.
otherwise it is a depressing dangerous morass of undesirables and the few hardcore elderly who are hanging on by their fingertips. it’s is mess.
Development – a few hometruths – and not an attempt at ‘limerick bashing’ – i’m sure it’s typical of lack of social orientated building and planning in ireland.
A cautionary tale – the splurge of apartment buildings in Limerick city centre has led to a fall in rental income and a difficulty in actually tenanting properties. So many of the buildings which were originally intended as ‘luxury ‘ apartments have become in effect modern ‘slums’ populated by transient populations of migrant workers, students and those in receipt of rent allowances. Absentee landlords quick to cash in on a section -50 buck have abandoned their apts to the management agents and as a result these ‘new’ buildings are becoming decrepid and unkempt, abandoned
A quick stroll around steamboat quay or mount kenneth will confirm same. This contributes to the ‘corridor of poverty’ which runs right through the city centre.Suburbs now bulge with wealthy thirtysomethings and their lodgers, fearful to live in the city in case their 05 Landrovers will get scratched by the hoody wearing wolverines who roam at 1am, looking for a wingmirror to kick off.Residential displacement continues as whole streets of houses once populated by families then purchased for student rental are coming onsale (Wolfe Tone Street / St Josephs Street) – while the shops once supported by settled residential communities are boarded up and abandoned (Parnell St).
those residences that are not for sale are being filled with the antisocial detrius of housing estates, given their marching orders by the city council and then a tenancy by the health board – god help us!
It’s not enough to create buildings which are easy on the eye – cities need to be a place where people want to live and bring up their families – why not abandon stamp duty for owner occupiers on city dwellings designated for regeneration and get people back into the city 7 days a week. not just weekends? it is the drip drip spend which keeps the corner shop and city centre pub open, locals who fill the coffers – and the church pews
The city councillors need to get the lead out, as the rot has well and truly set in. We need some concrete (oh the irony) initiatives to get people living in the city again – not some pathetic ‘spring fest’ or similar damp squib desperate efforts by the co-ordination office. and for god sake we should build on what we have, and not rip it down and replace it with another production line / bastard bauhaus/cladded shiny nightmare.
a hike in interest rates or a fall in numbers of house purchases – one notch tightened in the consumer belts and all of these retail outlets will be fighting for the same buck or packing up and heading to poland.
Ash1 – city resident
ps the barrington street property mentioned in an earlier thread still does not have a single tenant , 6 months after delivery. there are huge swathes of office space in the city centre for sales or lease and the city council continues to strangle businesses. it’s all a bit ’emperor’s new clothes’
