Procyclical Social Housing and the Crisis of Irish Housing Policy: Marketization, Social Housing, and the Property Boom and Bust

Abstract

This article analyzes the role of social housing in Ireland’s property bubble and its experience of the global financial crisis. The article argues that over recent decades social housing has been transformed from a countercyclical measure which counterbalances the market into a procyclical measure which fuelled Ireland’s housing boom. The reform of social housing financing and acquisition mechanisms has embedded social housing in the boom/bust dynamics of the private housing system. Analyzing the shifting relationship between social and private housing is crucial to understanding the role of housing policy in Ireland’s property bubble as well as the current housing crisis. Despite being caused by problems in the private housing and financial systems, the crisis has had very negative consequences for social housing, thus producing a crisis across the housing system as a whole.