FROM THE ARCHIVES:Buying a house in Dublin in 1939, when building societies gave maximum loans of two-thirds of house values, was not easy, as this advertising feature explained. –
JOE JOYCE
LET US suppose that Mr. Michael O’Halloran, newly arrived in Dublin with a wife and, say, two kids, wants somewhere to live.
If he has a thousand pounds in the bank he is on the pig’s back, and we need have no further concern for him.
If he can lay his hands on £200 or £300 all may yet be well.
He can call into the offices of one of the Irish building societies listed on this page, explain his needs, and before very long he will find himself the happy owner of a comfortable home.
Let us suppose, however, that Mr O’Halloran does not possess £200 or £300. The odds are that he has £50 or £70 – say £70 to be on the safe side – for the average young man does not marry until he has, at any rate, a bit laid by.
In these circumstances, what is he to do when he comes up to Dublin and looks around for a house?
First of all he faces the fact that his £70 is no earthly use to him so far as the purchase of a house is concerned. He must abandon the idea of owning his dwelling.
Next he asks the estate agents if there is any chance of getting a house to let at a rent which he can afford – remember that our imaginary Mr. O’Halloran is anything but a plutocrat. Here again his luck will be out, because, generally speaking, only the biggest and most expensive houses in Dublin are ever “to let” nowadays and the rents are far too high for a poor man’s pocket. So he is left with two choices.
He may rent a flat in some large house which once sheltered a wealthy family, but has been divided up into flats because wealthy families are not so common as they used to be.
That will serve his purpose, but it will not be what he wanted. It cannot be his home, as he contemplated his home before he realised what is meant by Dublin’s housing problem.
Perhaps, on the other hand, he is lucky enough to “know somebody in the Corporation,” and it may be that by dint of perseverance – and even by deducting a couple of pounds from his weekly income when he files his application – he is allotted a “Corporation house” in some new colony.
But only one Mr. O’Halloran out of a multitude like him has the luck to obtain a “Corporation house.” The “Corporation house” is meant for the really poor, not for the man who has a steady income of five or six pounds a week and seventy pounds in the bank. And even if he does happen to be the lucky one, it still is not his own house.
There are certainly hundreds of Mr. O’Hallorans in Dublin. There probably are thousands. They want to buy houses of their own, but cannot get them.
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