Last week Dublin City Council held their "Conference on Future Directions for Future Housing Policy" in Croke Park. The issue that was of most interest & concern at the conference was the Council's future change in policy to allow tenants of social housing flats to buy their own property.

Dublin City Council owns over 16,000 flats in Dublin (and approximately 10,000 houses on top of that). The Council allows people who live in their houses to buy them out, and the price depends on how long the tenant has lived there, how much rent they have paid over time, the condition & location of the property, etc.

The sale of Council flats inevitably means that many complexes will become privatised. The Council's proposals have not been finalised yet, but some of their plans involve turning over some estates to housing associations, in the same way the flats at Killarney St/Buckingham St were given over to Clúid. Other blocks, in prime inner-city locations, could be turned over to private management companies. The Council could benefit to the tune of €3.3 billion, which is a conservative estimate of the flats' value at current market prices. John FitzGerald & Brendan Kenny (city managers) have previously favoured PPPs (Public-Private Partnerships) in the redevelopment of inner-city complexes.

From the Newswire: Ten students were evicted from their house last night, with four hours notice, following a request for their washing machine to be fixed.

The landlord is well known to DIT Students’ Union, and other local Students’ Unions, who were involved in a claim against her just four weeks ago. The students had repeatedly asked for the repairs to be carried out and following a written request, the landlord gave the students less than a day to pack up and leave.

DIT Students’ Union Vice President Sharon Hughes was contacted by 2 of the DIT students and called to the address, where she assisted the students. Students were attempting to pack their belongings while the landlord accused various parties of trespassing and threatened not to return the students' deposits.

All lights in the house were turned off while students were trying to remove their belongings from the premises, with one girl tripping in the blackness. Sharon Hughes called two Gardaí from Whitehall station to the scene. The Gardaí had no comment to make on the legality of any of the landlords actions.