![]() ![]() She says that in the current housing climate, a private tenancy would put her at risk of the same experience she had last year (“I could take it and then a year later that landlord could decide to sell and I’ll be back at square one”), and more disruption for her son. The most she has been offered so far is a government-assisted move back into a private-rented flat funded by a new benefit called housing assistance payment. In the absence of any available social housing, she had no option but to declare herself homeless. To make things even more difficult, her landlord then decided to sell up, which forced her to suddenly confront a private-rented housing market in which the monthly rent for anything similar was well over €1,500 (£1,300). She had spent a long time working as a PA before her father’s diagnosis with cancer triggered a spell of depression that left her unemployed. Until February 2017, she and her son had been living in a two-bedroom flat in the Dublin suburb of Finglas. Q uinn’s story is a perfect case in point. This Saturday, a protest organised by the National Homeless and Housing Coalition is expected to attract thousands of people to the middle of Dublin, set on making the case for housing as a basic human right and venting their anger and fear about a simple enough fact: that Ireland’s capital is fast becoming an impossible place to live and thousands of lives are being ruined as a result. Since the summer, there have been repeated protests in the city, focused most spectacularly on occupations of vacant buildings. Last week, a survey titled the Expat City Ranking found that among people who live and work abroad, Dublin came out as the world’s worst capital for affordable accommodation. A stock line among activists demanding action from the government gets to the heart of all this: in 21st-century Dublin, they say, homeless families stay in hotels, and tourists stay in houses. The city is smattered with key boxes for Airbnb apartments. Meanwhile, residential neighbourhoods echo to the clack-clack-clack of suitcase wheels. Increasing numbers are being forced to live in hotels. In the four months between June and September, 415 Dublin families – including 893 children – became newly homeless, adding to a total across the city of about 1,400. These are national problems, but they are inevitably concentrated in Ireland’s capital, home to more than 10% of the country’s population. The number of families who have nowhere to live has increased by more than 20% since 2017. About 10,000 people in Ireland are reckoned to be homeless. This is one vivid element of a housing crisis that combines the most contorted aspects of the private market with a rising need that continues to go unanswered. The same move has been made by scores of other landlords: in August 2018, there were reckoned to be 3,165 entire properties listed on Airbnb in Dublin, compared with only 1,329 available for long-term rent. I pay £95 for a single night’s stay (including a £43 “cleaning fee”), which highlights why whoever owns it has decided to rent it out in this way. But the buggies and tricycles on each landing suggest that most of my temporary neighbours are families. As if to prove that I am not the only person there paying for a short let, there is a gaggle of young men in the flat above me, who – despite the fact that it is Monday – repeatedly sing a dire and apparently drunken version of Robbie Williams’s Angels between midnight and 1am. Table tops and work spaces throughout the building are additionally equipped with microphones, power and data points.The night before I meet Quinn, I stay in a flat just to the north of Dublin’s city centre, booked via Airbnb, which she and her son would presumably jump at. The building is furnished throughout with a mix of bespoke joinery, fabric and hardwood finishes. Themed rooms “Listings” such as Moroccan, Japanese, French and Mexican, bring together a wide range of worldwide design concepts and construction methodologies. Modern external oak clad rooms, timber floors and ceilings are offset with the presence of exposed services, concrete walls, structural steel framework, painted steel railings and metal deck ceilings bringing together a series of traditional and modern construction techniques. The fit-out comprised of a combination of open plan work spaces over three levels with a series of themed meeting and project rooms. The building is the European Headquarters for Airbnb. The works were located within 8 Hanover Quay and were carried out concurrently with the shell & core works. ![]()
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