Sustainable social housing regeneration in Ireland: A case study

Declining housing and environmental conditions and socioeconomic marginalisation have been common experiences of older social housing estates. These factors can lead to poor-quality living conditions for residents, estate management challenges for social landlords and poor life chances and reputational stigma for communities. One of the interventions proposed by central governments, local authorities and social housing landlords to address the problems experienced by such estates is estate regeneration. This paper presents a case study of a large social housing estate in the south of Ireland where a long-term estate regeneration masterplan has been implemented since 2013. The paper draws on the findings of multi-annual reviews of the implementation process based on quantitative and qualitative evaluations with multiple stakeholders including residents. The paper also comments on the effectiveness of regeneration strategies to address the impacts of austerity, market failure and structural factors.