Complex flat living

Want a glimpse of Ireland through immigrant eyes? Put yourself on a tight budget, without benefit of family or connections, and go apartment hunting in Dublin. Experience firsthand the thrill of mounting four flights of rickety stairs to enter a closet-sized fleapit, euphemistically billed a "spacious and newly refurbished double bedroom". Don't fret the sagging furniture: it's standard. The dreary neighbourhood? Chances are it'll liven up after 10pm. For an added touch of realism, give notice first. Nothing like a two week deadline to get the blood pumping.

In all fairness, safe, clean, affordable housing is probably no harder to find here than in, say, Manhattan. According to property values, you'll pay more here than in London, Paris, or, for that matter, any European city other than Luxembourg, Berne or Madrid.

A variation on the theme – the management company that takes over a building and runs it into the ground – recently forced me into a search for housing. The apartment management company's initial cost-cutting move was to sack my old building's cleaning staff. With immediate effect: trash in the lifts and hallways, ranging from candy wrappers to Coke and vodka bottles, to the truly revolting – eggshells, half eaten crusts, peach pits, melon rinds and worse. More troubling, smokers defying "no smoking" signs were dropping lit cigarettes onto the carpets. False (to date) fire alarms became so routine, the fire brigade started encountering technical difficulties turning them off.

If this were not enough, the central garden became a night time drinking site, leading to raised voices, more trash and, to put it politely, "public urination" beneath my bedroom window. The management company's response? "No place in our contract says we have to police people." Some nights, one party followed another: a barbeque from 6pm – midnight then an after hours get together from 2-4am. Imploring revellers to go elsewhere met with anything from indifference to hostility. "Go back ter America!" I was told once pre-dawn, "Cuz dis is Oireland!" I would have gladly obliged in the moment to escape your woman's singing.

Ill-mannered tenants thrive under management and landlords whose primary motivation is profit. Raise rents, pack the apartments and be damned if the building goes to ruin as long as you get your hefty profit before the final collapse. I watched as carpets were trashed, walls damaged, plate glass windows shattered, light-fixtures torn from the walls, handles ripped off lobby doors. One Saturday, the water quit and no one could be reached. I persevered through Sunday afternoon, giving up on the AWOL janitor and instead ringing the service company emergency number. Eventually, your man called back to insist, "A water main is broken", a claim easily disproved by checking with Dublin City Council'semergency number. The real issue was that the management was content to leave some 150 residents, including children, without water for 36 hours with no explanation and no attempt to ameliorate the situation.

Not hard (given my rent for a one bedroom was nearly what an Irish coworker pays for a four bedroom mortgage) to decide to move. In Dublin, a single person competes against couples with two incomes and young Romanians, Poles, Chinese, Russians, Italians and others willing to squeeze into cramped quarters. Nobody of any nationality prefers to live in the dilapidated, overcrowded conditions forced on many in this city. Facing ridiculously low vacancy rates that drive up rents, low wage tenants have no choice but to share sometimes four to a bedroom. In a vicious circle that benefits landlords, their misery fuels even higher rents.

Check out statistics in the second quarter report on www.daft.ie. Average rent for one bedroom apartments, a mere 21 per cent of Dublin's vacancies, is €900. Average time-to-let in the city centre? A whopping 8.6 days.

For a laugh, read Daft's description of those vying in Dublin's cutthroat market. We're the "Spar Generation," queuing for our breakfast rolls and cheerfully toiling behind hot food counters. Judging from Daft's upbeat and decided property owner's perspective, we can't wait to fork over hard earned euros for the privilege of sleeping four strangers to a wretched bedroom.

In the end, I'm lucky. I make decent money, I'm white and English is my native tongue. Consider the guy I overheard on his mobile in an internet café. "Three men... Russian," he said in halting English. "No, no job... How I will be paying? Savings!" Long pause. "No, better than job! What, I work in fast food and make minimum wage?! I have one year savings!" An instant later, he was swearing in Russian and commiserating with his two friends. I feel sorry for them. It's just a matter of time before they end up in a complex like the one I just left.