The Single Files: Learning to live with ourselves

Being single isn't just about having a partner or not. Increasing numbers of Irish people now live by themselves, so why do we keep building three-bed semi-Ds?

The number of people living alone has increased by 43 per cent in the past 10 years. Lone occupiers now represent almost a quarter of all Irish households. But finding a suitable home is becoming increasingly difficult for single people, thanks largely to the botched handling of Ireland’s building boom.

The trend towards single living has long been signposted. Family sizes have been falling over the past 30 years, while the number of people living alone has risen steadily. What hasn’t changed, though, is Ireland’s obsession with building three-bedroom semi-Ds, along with characterless apartment blocks with no ancillary facilities.

In 2007, long after the proverbial horse had bolted (with a cowboy developer whooping and hollering in the saddle), the Department of Environment introduced guidelines on creating “sustainable communities” modelled on Scandinavian urban-housing schemes. However, there is little chance of finding such a development today without jumping on a plane to Oslo.

“It is almost universal in Scandinavia that where you have one-bedroom apartments you have communal facilities where people can meet and feel part of a community,” says Dublin-based architect Sean Harrington. Each housing scheme would have something like a hobby room, or a communal lounge, “although in Sweden, invariably, it’s a sauna – where you can meet your neighbours even with your clothes off”.

There is an altogether different vibe to single living in Ireland, and arguably much of the western world. “For many people,” writes New Yorker critic Nathan Heller, living alone “has the taint of loserdom and brings to mind such characters as Ted Kaczynski [the Unabomber] and Shrek.”

Or, as Harrington puts it: “When we think of single-person households we think of sad, middle-aged men, living a life of sadness and alcoholism, but that’s very far from the truth. A lot of people want to live alone. It’s a lifestyle choice, and a lot more women want to live alone.”

This is borne out by the 2011 census, which showed more Irish women than men lived alone – 198,000 versus 194,000. Behind this, however, was an age imbalance. In the 35-49 age bracket, six out of 10 people living alone were men. This was more pronounced in rural areas, where 67.6 per cent of those living alone were men. After the age of 65, there was a sharp rise in the number of women living alone due to their higher relative life expectancy.

By European standards, we have a small proportion of singletons – and the gap hasn’t shifted much as single living is on the rise internationally. In 2011, people living alone accounted for 23.7 per cent of households. This compared to an EU average of 30.5, and a high of 46.4 in Denmark.

But where exactly are Irish singletons living? Because of a shortage of low-cost, one-bedroom apartments, many are house-sharing – a strange phenomenon to the average European. “In Germany, it’s really unusual to share an apartment. Around 50 per cent of all apartments in Berlin are one-person apartments,” says Harrington.

The Irish solution to this for some time was the creation of partitioned bedsits but these have effectively been banned since February 1st, when regulations came into force requiring all flats to meet basic habitation standards, including separate toilets and food-preparation areas. Although well-meaning, some believe the initiative has put further pressure on single renters.

New planning regulations may also be militating against lone dwellers. Responding to concerns about the erection of shoebox-sized apartments during the boom years, local authorities have introduced minimum sizes for one-bedroom apartments – in Dublin of 55 sq metres, and outside Dublin of 45 sq metres, “which is still very big”, Harrington notes. “The policy was very well intentioned. It aimed to get people to live in apartments on a permanent basis but it ignored a critical segment of the population. There is a very clear case for smaller one-beds and studios. There is an incredible shortage of low-cost accommodation.”

The vulnerable section

It’s not just trendy youngsters who lose out. “It’s very difficult for vulnerable people who are on their own to find suitable housing,” says Bob Jordan, director of housing charity Threshold. “There is a gap for well-designed, small, single-person accommodation. People would have come out of homeless hostels into bedsits, and found conditions were superior in the hostels.”

For this reason, he welcomes the new tenancy regulations, pointing out that bedsits have halved in number between 2006 and 2011 to 4,500 nationally. However, he says something needs to be put in their place. “What we need is a strategy for single-person housing in Ireland. There is a direct correlation between lack of single housing and homelessness; 80 per cent of homeless people are single, most are single men.”

It seems the only people benefiting from the current scenario are landlords, who have seen rents increase in certain parts of the country, particularly Dublin and Cork, according to recent surveys.

Some landlords are also making huge sums from State-supported tenants. Around €2 billion was paid in rent supplements to private landlords between 2007 and 2012, according to One Family.

“We were just astounded by this figure,” says Stuart Duffin, direct of policy at the organisation. “For a lone parent, access to good quality, social and affordable housing is very limited”, and it’s becoming more so due to new, local-authority rent caps.

Research published by Focus Ireland before Christmas also indicates that cuts in rent supplements over the past three years are not driving down rents. Instead, tenants are making“under-the-counter payments” to “landlords in order to keep a roof over their heads”.

Single people are now disproportionately represented on social-housing waiting lists. Department of Environment figures for 2011 showed that of the more than 98,000 households on housing waiting lists nationwide, almost half (49.6) were single-person households.

A glimpse of a better future might be taken from one of Harrington’s projects. A few years ago, he completed a scheme for Dublin City Council at York Street comprising 66 one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments. There’s no sauna for residents but there are other communal facilities, including a courtyard allotment, a children’s garden, and collective-waste-recycling and water-heating schemes.

The scheme is designed for a mix of families, including single people, young and old. “Senior citizens don’t all want to live together; they like to be around young families,” he says. “The healthiest communities have the greatest mix. The more complicated the better.”