McDowell "Folly of abolishing bedsits only to promote co-living is now becoming clear"

Brendan Burgess

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Folly of abolishing bedsits only to promote co-living is now becoming clear

Broken system places further emphasis on State to focus on increasing supply
www.irishtimes.com

Nobody knows exactly how many bedsits were eliminated in 2013. These were the first and cheapest rung on the housing ladder. They suited students, single people, separated people and many others. It appears that perhaps as many as 15,000 bedsits disappeared around that time.

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Strangely, the initiative to abolish bedsits came from Threshold, the housing charity, which convinced the department that nobody should live in a dwelling unless it has separate bathroom and kitchen facilities.
 
Brendan Burgess said:
Strangely, the initiative to abolish bedsits came from Threshold, the housing charity, which convinced the department that nobody should live in a dwelling unless it has separate bathroom and kitchen facilities.
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Nothing strange about that at all.

Threshold has been deeply political for decades and its leftist extremism has badly corrupted public policy on housing provision.
 
It’s pretty common for organisations (or opposition parties) to push for something when they don’t have responsibility for the consequences.

Probably a dumb question. What happened to the bedsits. Would many have been converted into larger apartments?
 
I remember several elderly gentlemen coming to look at a 1 bed I was renting out in Smithfield a year or so after this came into effect.

Rents were lowish post the recession. Lovely gentlemen, all had one thing in common, their rental home (bedsits in Ranelagh/Cllontarf) was being sold on foot on this insane legislation. One had lived in the same place since the 1960s, quite happily by all accounts and was distraught about what he was to do.

It became clear to me that low as the rent was, these gentlemen would be quite stretched to pay it and utilities and the rest.

It really was a horrible decision, made by people who were abe to go home every evening to their lovely comfortable homes without a thought how this affected so many elderly people. Elderly people who were at the end of the runway in terms of being able to react and change course.
 
Actually you are correct even in the room to improve series with dermot bannon they featured a big house in ranelagh that was originally subdivided into flats and bedsits and was being converted to a single use dwelling at huge cost I might add
 
McDowell make the point that many former bedsits have been converted back to the single-family dwellings that they once were. He also points out that the objective of no shared bathrooms or shared kitches was not acheived, because so many people now live in shared houses.

But let's join those two dots. There was nothing to stop the properties that were set into bedsits becoming shared houses, rather than single family dwellings. But that didn't happen. Why not? Because they didn't make particularly suitable shared houses; they weren't what house-sharers were looking for. The market decided that they would be single-family dwellings, and that newer, and more suburban, houses would become shared houses.

Are people in shared houses today better off than people in bedsits were, back in the day? Generally, yes; a shared house will generally have at least one communal living/sitting room, and and often a communal dining space, both avaible to all the occupants. And usually at least one of the bedrooms will be en suite, so not everybody has only a shared bathroom. Plus the residents have control of the halls and staircases in a way that they didn't in the old bedsits, where those spaces were generally indescribably dingy.
Fortune said:
I've never encountered someone who was living in a bedsit. Who was living in them?
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My widowed, and fairly poor, grandmother lived in a bedsit in Ranelagh in the 1960s and 1970s. It was ghastly.
 
Fortune said:
I've never encountered someone who was living in a bedsit. Who was living in them?
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The ones I came across were single young people in their 20s coming to work in Dublin from elsewhere in the country or abroad. Similar profile who now end up sharing a house and as noted, if it's an older house likely to have to share kitchen and bathroom.
They were small but if you couldn't afford an apartment and wanted more privacy than a shared house, that was an option.

Some of them actually did have their own WC but maybe not shower\bath or proper kitchen - just space for a kettle, toaster, microwave.

A laundromat and a large number of fast food \ takeaway dining options relative to the size of the area is a giveaway.
 
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Fortune said:
I've never encountered someone who was living in a bedsit. Who was living in them?
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Had one in clontarf for 2 years while working in my early twenties
. 6 rooms over 3 floors, each with a single bed,cooker and sink. 2 shared bathrooms for the whole house. I had a rope under my bed with a fire escape plan out the window !
Was happy as Larry there.
 
Fortune said:
I've never encountered someone who was living in a bedsit. Who was living in them?
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When I was in my teens and early 20s working in the Civil Service - most colleagues "from the country" were living in bedsits in Rathmines/Drumcondra etc. Many's the night I slept on sticky orange-patterned carpets, waking up in the freezing cold. (Taxis were rare - and expensive in 'dem days.)
 
Fortune said:
I've never encountered someone who was living in a bedsit. Who was living in them?
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This is why they won't be ever coming back. Anyone who is not nearing pension age or outside Rathmines never heard of them and when mentioned are horrified that people once lived in such squalor. This is what happens when you give the childer a bedroom each growing up
 
Fold out beds were common or more rare here 'murphy' type pull down beds.
You'd want to have a good back!

They filled a role in the city's housing though. Whatever about stopping any more from coming onto the market, or regulating the worst of them out - banning all of the then existing ones was a mistake.
 
I think the folly was to abolish in the midst of a global financial crash brought on by overlending in the property sector. Albeit, it could hardly have been foreseen in a country that built too many properties that a severe shortage of properties would follow a decade on?

The reasons for abolishing the bedsits were sound :-

- to push out old-stock substandard, damp, insecure, poor sanitatised housing
- to raise the standard of Irelands property stock.

If co-living units in well ventilated, secure accommodation with private bathrooms, proper sanitation etc were being developed in tandem with abolishing poor standard bedsits then perhaps housing would be less of an issue.
 
odyssey06 said:
They filled a role in the city's housing though.
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So did slums. So do homeless hostels and hotels serving as emergency accommodation. As in fairness do massive mansions in leafy suburbs occupied by MCDowell and his ilk. Same way drug dealers fill a role in the justice system.

The mere fact that something fills a role shouldn't be taken to suggest that thing is desirable and should be encouraged or even permitted.
Sister Sara said:
I think the folly was to abolish in the midst of a global financial crash
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The folly was the institutional belief, despite the clear empirical evidence to the contrary produced by the 2011 census results, that housing would never need to be constructed at scale and consequent failure to preserve significant capacity in the construction industry.

Of course when we consistently elect numpties who can't do basic maths to the highest offices of the land we've really only got ourselves to blame.
 
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