Sir, - While agreeing with Fintan O'Toole (Opinion, January 14th) on the need to eliminate segregation in housing, I must take issue with his premise that the gentrification of the old public housing areas is a silver lining in the present housing crisis.
In welcoming the middle-class colonisation of traditional working class areas he fails to ask the obvious question: Where are the working class to find housing when the middle-class professionals have out-bid them in their own communities?
He is also over-optimistic in his assumption that the "wild, uncharted territories" are being tentatively colonised by the middle classes. By his own admission, the areas being "colonised" are those public housing schemes which have become mature, settled communities with low crime rates, good local services and few social problems. In short, the best areas of public housing are being picked off by the middle classes, while areas with deprivation and social problems are ignored. Is this a silver lining in the housing crisis? I think not.
It should be remembered that these housing schemes were built for those who did not have the means to house themselves and who, to say the least, were poorly served by the private rented system of the day. Due to the appalling neglect of the public housing programme we are now seeing a reversal of this, whereby many people have no hope of finding a home of their own. Indeed, this has been the lot of the working class for some time, but we have had to wait until the middle class was affected before the problem was articulated.
The displacement of the less-well-off from their traditional heartlands is just one aspect of the crisis. The true elimination of housing segregation would be when the poor begin to displace the rich from their traditional territories rather than the present process - which I, for one, find more than a little disquieting. - Yours, etc.
John Deaton, Dundrum, Dublin 14.