This paper explores the responses to the housing crisis in Dublin, Ireland, by analyzing recent housing policies promoted to prevent family homelessness. I argue that the private rental market subsidies have played an increasing role in the provision of social housing in Ireland. Instead of policies that facilitate the construction of affordable housing or the direct construction of social housing, current housing policies have addressed the social housing crisis by encouraging and relying excessively on the private market to deliver housing. The housing crisis has challenged governments to increase the social housing supply, but the implementation of a larger plan to deliver social housing has not been effective, as is evidenced by the rapid decline of both private and social housing supply and the increasing number of homeless people in Dublin.

The housing sector in Ireland was severely affected by the recent global financial crisis, which has given rise to new forms of housing intervention (Kirchin et al. 2014, Social Justice 2017). Since the global financial crisis hit Ireland in 2008-2009 and the country had to enter an IMF emergency stability programme, the dominant neoliberal housing policy-model has been influential in reshaping housing systems and housing opportunities in the country (Dukelow 2015; O’Callaghan 2015). This crisis has had a profound effect on families as a combined result of low incomes, increasing renting costs, and the housing shortage. Its effects have not just hit the unemployed. Although the unemployment rate fell from 15.1% in December 2010 to 6.0% in December 2017 (Eurostat 2018), families are still priced out of the property market. In some areas working couples would need nearly more than a third of their take-home pay each month to cover the instalments necessary to repay a mortgage in Dublin (RTB 2018). Unable to commit one-third of their income to a mortgage, the only remaining option for many families is to rent privately.