On the corner of a housing estate in Cherry Orchard, west Dublin, lies a semidetached house with its front door and windows boarded up by rusted shutters.
While the sight of a boarded-up home might not be unusual for the area, with a number of others dotted around nearby estates, 31 Croftwood Drive is different.
The site is being used as a stables by locals and has been for years. In the front garden sits five small carts while out the back on this particular morning a small horse can be seen inside a makeshift shed with a water tank also visible.
The property is owned by Dublin City Council (DCC), which has plans to build a second three-bedroomed house on the side garden. Records show the local authority bought the house in 2018 for €138,000.
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The council says works commenced a couple of months ago to refurbish the property, but its contractor on site “came under some intimidation”.
“We are now working with the area to try and resolve the issues so that DCC can recommence refurbishment works,” it says.
“Once works recommence we would be hopeful of having the property ready for social housing within nine months.”
A resident who lives nearby nods silently when the issue of intimidation is raised.
“You can’t open your mouth. If they knew I was talking [to you], my windows would be gone tonight. It’s terrible. I’d say everyone would love to see houses built there,” the resident says.
“It’s been sitting like that for a few years now. There doesn’t seem to be anyone doing anything about it. I know they put up planning signs that two houses would be built there, but someone took them down. It would be lovely to see someone living in it.”
People Before Profit councillor Hazel De Nortúin, originally from Cherry Orchard, says that at one stage towards the end of the Covid pandemic in 2022 she counted 35 houses boarded up in the area.
While the councillor acknowledges the situation has improved over recent months, she says the level of vacancy “remains high”.
The council says it has 11 “void” units in the Cherry Orchard area, with 10 of these under contractors “with various completion dates for ready to let”.
Void is the term given to when council tenants vacate houses or flats, either transferring to somewhere more suitable or leaving to purchase their own property. The death of a tenant or a marital breakdown can also result in a void unit, which can vary greatly in terms of the level of refurbishment required.
Houses generally get boarded up as soon as they become vacant and remain so until the void is refurbished and ready to re-let.
De Nortúin says there are a number of factors at play in Cherry Orchard as to why it appears there are more boarded-up homes there compared to other parts of the capital.
She points to a higher concentration of social housing, which leads to a greater turnover of units as well as an ageing population who often want to downsize.
She also references incidents of tenants having to leave suddenly due to intimidation, domestic violence or antisocial behaviour, with properties vandalised, which then take longer to refurbish.
“Some people mightn’t put Cherry Orchard as a preference, even though they could be from Ballyfermot,” De Nortúin says.
“They don’t have the social circle to go up to an area that would be deemed to have high antisocial behaviour and there would be a little bit of a reluctance to bring children there that might be seen as a bit vulnerable.”
The 2022 Census shows council housing is the dominant supplier, with 36 per cent of housing stock described as local authority rented in Cherry Orchard.
It is a “unique suburb” in Dublin 10. It was developed in the mid-20th century alongside Ballyfermot as “a social housing project of Dublin City Council”, according to the Cherry Orchard Implementation Board.
“Although Cherry Orchard Hospital opened in 1953, it has long been recognised that the area lacked the necessary supporting infrastructure to support the basic needs of the community,” it says.
The board, which was set up in the wake of a Garda car being rammed by youths in stolen cars in November 2022, is a cross-government initiative to target supports for Cherry Orchard. Pobal’s deprivation index describes most of the area as “very disadvantaged”.
Funding is another factor raised by De Nortúin and others. Bringing boarded-up city council houses back into use is expected to cost almost €50,000 a unit this year, with Government contributing a maximum of €11,000 each, the local authority’s budget figures published last year showed.
The total cost of refurbishing the council’s vacant and derelict homes this year is expected to run to €28 million, with the local authority bearing almost 80 per cent of the costs, primarily using borrowed money.
Council chief executive Richard Shakespeare said last November it was “not realistic” to continue borrowing at this level “year on year”.
The Department of Housing and Local Government says it engaged with DCC recently and advised on “some vacant dwellings cost-savings measures”.
“Some of the high costs can be linked to energy efficiency works to the property, ie heat pumps, external wrapping, attic insulation, windows and doors and this can be claimed for under the department retrofit programme with a maximum of €48,850 available for this work,” it said.
The department also said as part of the programme for government, consideration was being given to the introduction of a new voids programme with a view to further improve turnaround times of vacant social housing units.
However, there is “no set time frame in place” for the new programme.
Sinn Féin councillor Daithí Doolan says funding needs to be increased and targeted towards communities who “need those homes turned around a lot quicker”.
“If they’re lying dormant in those communities it just attracts antisocial behaviour that wouldn’t happen in other communities,” he says.
“There’s situations where people get into the empty property, they’ll damage it, it can get flooded, they’ll try and take out any functioning things like the boiler inside. That’s why they have to be steeled up very quickly. That’s why it looks ugly and can sometimes become a site for illegal dumping.
“All that creates an image and an environment, a sense that an area is being further marginalised, and then there’s more work required. It almost spirals. Initially it might have cost €40,000 to do up a property, it’s then spiralling and you’re playing catch-up.
“That is unfair to people on the housing list and also people who have to live on that road. Particularly if you’re living in close proximity, or on either side, you can feel quite threatened by some of the behaviour that goes on there after dark.”
Just over a kilometre from the stables on Croftwood Drive sit two neighbouring properties which are boarded up on Cherry Orchard Green. The houses were among a batch of social housing units delivered by the council in 2019.
We were told when we moved in there will be no antisocial behaviour, no dumping, that this place will be monitored
Elaine (not her real name) lives on the road with her children and recalls how a gang of youths set fire to a garden shed in one of the properties, which has been boarded up since 2022, over recent weeks.
“They [the youths] literally crawl across my wall and go in [to the empty property],” she says.
“From 4pm every day my blinds are shut because you can’t even make eye contact with them. They’re saying, ‘What are you f****** looking at?’
“A few of the neighbours have called the guards and I was known as a rat, even though I didn’t call the guards. That’s been my life. This is what we’ve been put through for the last three years.”
The council says there is “an ongoing issue” with the property that it and the tenant are discussing and which “needs to be resolved before refurbishment works can be carried out”. It says “work has commenced” on the neighbouring boarded-up house.
Elaine says: “They’re such lovely houses, but it’s an eyesore. We were told when we moved in that you’re responsible for the grass outside your house, to keep your property clean, there will be no antisocial behaviour, no dumping, that this place will be monitored.
“None of them boxes have been ticked properly. When I have family pulling up for parties I say, ‘Just don’t look next door’.”
