- 13,974
- Ireland
- driftking18594
- CiaranGTR94
It's the same story here in Ireland, although it's more of a case of protecting a street of clapped-out 150-year-old ex-tenement blocks because it got mentioned in "Ulysses" than having a nice view. The NIMBYs will also feign concern for the environment (while owning some obese crapbox like a Nissan Qashqai or Kia Sportage) or a proposed apartment block either "not being in keeping with our area's architectural heritage" or being filled with "transient workers". Any residential building higher than 6 storeys evokes horror stories of the infamous Ballymun Flats, which were built in the 1960s following the clearing of inner-city slums, and became a by-word for drug (especially heroin) and gang-related violence.The rent bubble is going to burst and it's going to result in people moving away from these areas that attracted all these jobs leaving a brain drain. I'm not sure how you fix it though, but allowing for better zoning and more high-density housing is certainly a start. Unfortunately, here in Salt Lake we have a bunch of rich boomers who don't want young people living near them and spoiling the view of the mountains. I'm sure it's like this in other places too.
To cap it all off, pretty much any development is funded by a real estate conglomerate just for renting out at extortionate rates (you'd be lucky to get a 1-bed apartment in Dublin for under €1500 per month), our government is quite happy to pay said rates under the Housing Assistant Payment scheme instead of building social housing, and our national planning authority is horrendously understaffed.