Dublin is in the grip of a serious housing and cost-of-living crisis, with skyrocketing rent and unaffordable home prices, poor housing quality for renters, and rising levels of evictions and homelessness. In some short-term lets, residents have reported issues with faulty plumbing and water cutting out for long periods of time. Reforms to the Irish housing and water sectors have ‘squeezed’ low-income tenants, who now pay more out of less.

Dublin was once a symbol of water abundance; now, there are over 1000 households in the metro area without piped running water. Will these numbers continue to rise? Why— and what can be done about it? Our research in Dublin investigates forces that drive the swing back to plumbing poverty; local pushback and organizing by Dubliners against housing and water pressures; and the fate of rising inequality in a wealthy European city.