Photo by Oliver Gargan – Own work.
Sunday, Nov 23, 2025
By Devin Savage
How California’s housing ‘catastrophe’ previews Ireland’s future – and why the Apple windfall must fund the LUAS before Dublin becomes a city of shoebox apartments.
The Collison brothers took their startup Stripe.com to Silicon Valley’s Y Combinator startup incubator in 2010, which was in Silicon Valley at the time. John Collison recently published an opinion peice in the Irish Times about the sclerotic state of Ireland’s big infrastructure projects, and described the situation as essentially engineered to fail. My own experience from my native state of California shows me that Collison is correct.
Sacramento, 1960: When Teachers Could Afford Houses
After college, my parents left the Midwest for California in 1960, got married, and took teaching jobs in the Sacramento area schools. California was importing teachers by the dozens – young educators from the Eastern states to fill classrooms bursting with baby boomers. Like other teachers, my parents could afford a house in a Sacramento suburb. A real house – four bedrooms, a yard, a garage. My mother’s income wasn’t even allowed to be considered by the bank for mortgage qualification. A California ranch on a teacher’s salary. And not just Sacramento- all across California affordable suburbia sprouted alongside the wildflowers after the end of the Second World War.
The postwar housing boom was fueled by government intervention that made homeownership suddenly accessible. Before President Roosevelt’s New Deal created the Federal Housing Administration in 1934, aspiring homeowners needed down payments averaging 58% of a home’s purchase price – effectively limiting ownership to the wealthy. The FHA changed everything, stretching mortgages over 20 and 30 years with relatively small upfront payments. After the war, these programmes expanded dramatically, with the Veterans Administration joining the effort and the FHA issuing low-interest loans directly to builders.
October 1960. Mountain View, CA. The new Mr. and Mrs. Savage
The combination proved explosive: government-backed mortgages made buying often cheaper than renting, while subsidised construction drove costs down. The FHA deliberately channeled this development onto open land outside urban centers – former farmland and empty acreage – creating the conditions for a tidal wave of suburban construction. Thousands of single-family ranch homes sprouted across former agricultural and vacant land. The infrastructure was simple: roads, cars, single-family zoning, schools designed for neighborhoods of families. The conditions were set up for success- of a type. Suburban success.
It worked beautifully – for that economy, in that era. But nobody knew what was coming. Silicon Valley was incubating in utero. In 1939, Bill Hewlett and David Packard founded their company in a one-car garage in Palo Alto, California, a suburb of San Francisco. It would prove to be transformative.
Fast-forward to today. Those same Santa Clara Valley properties where families once lived? They’ve been carved up. Divided into little shoeboxes. California’s housing crisis has spawned laws like the HOME Act (SB 9), controversial, but which now allows homeowners to subdivide lots and stack multiple units where single families once lived. The extreme cost of housing – with Silicon Valley home prices amongst the highest globally – has made these conversions irresistible. Property owners can split their lots to build up to four units on what was previously zoned for a single home. Accessory Dwelling Units, or “granny flats,” sprout in backyards. Tiny ‘micro studio’ apartments have started to spring up.
What was designed as family housing now serves a completely different purpose: packing maximum rental income from a knowledge-economy workforce that can’t afford traditional homeownership. A friend calls them “monkey cages” – between 280 to 400 square feet, $2-3,000 a month, tech workers stacked in subdivided homes that were never designed for that density.
Teachers and other middle income earners? They can’t afford to live anywhere near their schools- that is unless they are single or are a childless couple. Essential workers face commutes of up to three hours each way. Many young families have abandoned the region entirely.
Why Transport Infrastructure Is the Foundation
Nobody really wants to live in a shoebox. Or a monkey cage. They want real homes.
Dublin doesn’t have California’s luxury. There’s no Sacramento to flee to – no sprawling valley where housing is cheaper and major highways facilitate commutes that are still marginally tolerable. Ireland is a small island with limited roads and developable land.
But Dublin also has the chance to avoid California’s infrastructure mistakes – if Silicon Valley’s lessons are learned. We’ve seen this before, Ireland.
Silicon Valley did eventually build light rail. The VTA system opened in 1987, expanded to 42 miles of track and 60 stations. On paper, it looked like a solution. In reality, it became another white elephant – a costly monument to poor planning that does little to solve the transportation crisis it was meant to address.
The problems are instructive: VTA light rail averages just 301 boardings per mile, making it one of the least-used systems in the United States- the entire system moves only 15,800 or so passengers per day. It requires $9.30 in subsidies per passenger trip – the highest in the nation. Cross-town trips that take 25 minutes by car consume 90 minutes on light rail. The express service was discontinued in 2018. Service is infrequent, connections are awkward, and many stations sit between freeways and industrial zones rather than where people actually live and work. Further, there is no direct airport access- at the airport stop, one must cross a wide boulevard to the bus stop- and wait for a bus that runs about every twenty minutes during normal service hours. No dedicated airport shuttle- just a regular city bus. Who designed this system anyway? Dublin? Are you listening? (The LUAS and Rail systems in Dublin do not go to the airport.)
VTA leaders themselves have admitted that building light rail was a poor match with adjoining land uses. The system was designed for a commute pattern that didn’t exist and couldn’t create the density needed to support it because land use policies remained unchanged. They built the rail lines along freeways and through low-density areas, then wondered why ridership stayed abysmal. The cart came before the horse – or more accurately, the rail came before the rezoning. Perhaps decades before. We just don’t know.
This is the critical lesson: transport infrastructure alone isn’t enough. You need coordinated land use policy that allows density near stations, and you need to build where people actually need to go.
As I see it, Dublin has 2 or 2.5 choices:
Option 1: The California Path (current trajectory)
Leave transport infrastructure unchanged
Watch as existing housing stock gets subdivided into high-density units
Density increases WITHOUT the infrastructure to support it
City centre becomes more and more unaffordable
Suburbs remain car-dependent and disconnected
Families priced completely out over the next decade
End state: Shoebox apartments, three-hour commutes, social fabric shredded, and Ireland’s young people move abroad- USA, Australia, United Kingdom, Scandinavia.
Option 1.5: The Silicon Valley Mistake (expensive failure)
Build light rail to check a box
Don’t coordinate with land use policy
Place stations in inconvenient locations
Maintain car-centric suburban zoning
End result: Empty trains, continuing car dependence, Apple’s billions wasted
Option 2: The Paris/London Path (requires decisive action NOW)
Massively expand transport infrastructure
LUAS extensions to suburbs where people actually live, and a ring to connect the spokes
Coordinate with aggressive rezoning – allow density within 500m of every station
Enable new construction where land actually exists
New development can be DESIGNED for higher density with proper infrastructure
City centre rental pricing pressure reduces, the need to carve up more spaces is reduced
Families can live in connected suburbs with genuine urban access
Maintain liveability while accommodating growth
Paris and London work because they built comprehensive metro systems BEFORE they hit a crisis point, AND they allowed dense development around stations. They built for the future, not for the present, and they made sure land use policy evolved with infrastructure investment.
Silicon Valley built rail without addressing land use. Ireland risks building nothing at all. Both are catastrophic outcomes.
I’m telling you this because I’ve watched this movie before. And Dublin is about to experience the same disaster – unless it learns from California’s mistakes. And this does not even include expected sea level rise- which is on track to affect Dublin’s coastline from Howth to Sandymount. Residents will be displaced by the water. Are we just going to stand by and watch it happen?
The Approaching Iceberg: Dublin’s Population Explosion
As Collison pointed out- Ireland’s population has exploded from 3.5 million in 1990 to 5.5 million today – the fastest growth rate in the EU except tiny Malta and Luxembourg. Net migration since 2021 is 88% higher than the previous three years. This isn’t slowing down; it’s accelerating. BTW- check up on apartment prices in Luxembourg. Shocking indeed.
Meanwhile, Ireland adds only about 30,000-35,000 housing units per year. The backlog grows larger every year.
Collison states that Ireland has “Europe’s second-fewest homes per person.” He detailed project after project that has stalled: MetroLink (25 years in planning), the Water Supply Project connecting Dublin to the Shannon (proposed 30 years ago, still not in planning), Grid West (shelved after decades). Is he wrong to be frustrated? There was a bit of criticism thrown his way. Is he at least partially correct? If so, Ireland has some reckoning to do, and fast.
The water crisis illustrates the severity. Dublin’s Greater Water Area currently operates at 99% of production capacity – essentially maxed out and vulnerable to restrictions during peak demand. Yet projections indicate the region needs 34% more water by 2044 to support planned population and economic growth. The current infrastructure already impacts the ability to build new homes, and without dramatic improvements, water shortages could lead to restrictions and outages. A new water supply project from the River Shannon is desperately needed, but even if approved immediately, delivery won’t happen for another decade. When a city literally runs out of water capacity, new housing construction stops – not because of policy, not because of NIMBYs, but because you cannot build homes without water infrastructure.
The three wise monkeys- what could they be avoiding?
This is the iceberg. Everyone can see it. The warnings have been brought to the captain for years. And yet the Titanic steams ahead at full speed, changing nothing.
The Titanic: Infrastructure Built for a Different Economy
Here’s the core problem, and it’s the same one that destroyed affordability in California:
Infrastructure designed for one economic reality must now serve a completely different economy – and it cannot. A Model-T factory is not equipped to build Teslas.
California suburbs in the 1950s-70s were built for middle-class families with cars and stable employment. Single-family homes, wide roads, parking lots, low density. That infrastructure now has to serve a knowledge economy of highly-paid singles and couples who need urban density, while families need choice – they should be able to move to the outskirts of Dublin for affordability without being punished with excessive commutes and jam-packed city centre parking.
The infrastructure doesn’t match the present economy. So what effect does the current trajectory produce?
- Land values skyrocket (tech money)
- Zoning stays the same (single-family cultural monument to the good ‘ol days)
- Existing homes get subdivided illegally or semi-legally- or even legally
- Density increases WITHOUT infrastructure to support it
- Schools, hospitals, transport remain calibrated for suburban density while serving urban density
- Result: Higher and higher costs, lower liveability, shoebox apartments prevail
Dublin is at the exact inflection point California missed in the 1990s.
You have:
- Established housing stock built for traditional patterns, albeit mostly already apartments
- Economic transformation (Apple, Google, Stripe, pharma, the extra-indigenous economy)
- Rising land values that incentivise subdivision
- A policy environment (RPZ rent controls) that encourages conversion over new building
- Minuscule transport infrastructure relative to need
Collison notes Ireland has 41 per cent fewer trains, roads and other transport infrastructure per capita than high-income European countries. He also wrote that Ireland has the lowest proportion of electrified rail of any EU member state. But a quick search revealed that there are also under three thousand parking spots across the main train and LUAS stations in Dublin. For a city trying to accommodate a growing population, it’s like sending a lake of water through a garden hose.
Everything Ireland has done appears to be minuscule compared to what is actually needed. IMO. Change my mind. Ireland might as well be handing out one-way tickets to Melbourne along with the Secondary School Leaving Certificates (Diplomas).
The White Elephant: Process Over Outcomes
In my book The DNA of Disaster, I write about Cultural Monuments – the beliefs, structures, and processes that societies build and then often refuse to question even when they’re causing catastrophe. These monuments create blind spots that make disaster inevitable- like the US Constitution’s Second Amendment. Elevated, Cultural Monument status. Even though this ‘Cultural Monument’ has led to the unquestioning acceptance of the highest rates of gun violence in the Western world. Thoughts and prayers. A moment of silence.
Ireland has built a quasi Cultural Monument to “anti-corruption process.” It’s understandable – as Collison pointed out, the legacy of Haughey, Ahern, and Burke demanded reform. But like any mission creep, the original justification seems to have ossified into something that prevents adaptation and advancement.
Collison documents this Bureau-kram*: since 2000, Ireland has created 303 new government agencies, compared to 74 in the prior 25 years. Each agency has a narrow mandate. Each one optimises for its specific goal. Apparently, none of them can make trade-offs.
From where I am located in Germany, I can’t tell you anything first-hand about:
- 228 homes blocked in Killarney to protect a bat commute route (I know there is more to this, but)
- The old Citibank building on the Liffey can’t be demolished because construction emits carbon – forcing development onto greenfield sites that require more car commuting and MORE carbon
- An Taisce blocking the Galway ring road, the M3 motorway, the Shannon LNG scheme
- Fingal County Council throttling flights from Dublin Airport
But some things are impossible to ignore. Anyone in the Emerald Isle can tell you Ireland has a housing problem and nobody seems to have an actionable plan to solve it. It also has a traffic problem, as anyone who has been to Galway recently can tell you. Nothing is on the horizon that I am aware of to address these issues. It’s apparently gridlock in Ireland. Whether or not you argee with Collison, his statements are information. He has some valid points, and IMO these points need to be considered.
To be clear: environmental protection isn’t the enemy here. Ireland’s biodiversity may be in poor condition, climate change is real, and protected species matter. But the question is whether the current system can make intelligent trade-offs between competing urgent needs – housing, transport, heritage, environment – or whether it simply produces paralysis where nothing gets built, including the green infrastructure Ireland needs.
The process has obscured the cause. And it’s now a clog that threatens to prevent building anything at all. But the building opportunity provided by the electric rail extensions would enable housing that is not so dependent on major water infrastructure projects. For example- the new buildings could be passive homes requiring very low powered heating and aircon systems, built-in rainwater catchment systems could reduce dependence on potable water- provding the bulk of water for toilets and irrigation. The overall contstruction of the new developments could be more resistant to the economic impacts of climate change and population growth. After all- the economic well-being of the whole Irish population is an outcome worth pursuing- not just those who work at Apple, Facebook and Google. Ireland has been great at attracting large tech companies from the United States. But now, let’s think about the installed, built residential environment a bit more- bring it up to the highest standards now, which will stabilise Dublin’s
There is no apparent person at the helm actively steering away from the iceberg. There appears to be only a committee of agencies, each one saying “not my remit” as the ship bears down on catastrophe.
The €14 Billion Question: Use It or Lose the Moment
The Apple tax windfall is €14 billion. One-time money. This is not recurring revenue you can spend on ongoing operations.
This is the moment. Ireland will never have this opportunity again.
Here’s what the windfall should fund:
Primary: Transport Infrastructure (60-70% of windfall)
- LUAS extensions into suburbs where land exists for development and rail to the airport!
- Just get it done. Take the bull by the horns. Please. To the airport. Please.
- Metro completion – not another 25 years of planning. It’s never going to be easier than it is TODAY
- Integration – make the systems work together- coordinate with land use
- Cycling infrastructure – faster to build than rail, complements public transport. Look up Tübingen, Germany and also Heidelberg, Germany. Both have ample bike lanes and pedestrian/bike bridges
- Bus rapid transit lane expansion – an interim solution while rail expands- consider this- perhaps as a ‘lanes to rails’ programme.
This is one-time capital expense matching one-time revenue. It creates lasting infrastructure value. Most importantly: it unlocks the ability to build housing where land actually exists.
Secondary: Planning Reform Enablement (20-30%)
- Infrastructure grants for developers building near transport corridors
- Fast-track planning for high-density development within 500m of LUAS/Metro stations
- Seed funding for modular/efficient construction methods that can scale quickly
Tertiary: Targeted Social Housing (10-20%)
- Government-owned housing for genuinely low-income families
- But NOT as the primary solution – government construction is historically slower and costlier
What NOT to spend it on:
- Ongoing operational expenses (the funds will become depleted for nothing in particular)
- More process, more agencies, more studies
- Housing policy without transport and water infrastructure
The Parchment Solutions
The RPZ policy – rent controls capped at 2% annual increases, 6-year minimum tenancies – is what I call a parchment solution. It looks good on paper. It sounds compassionate. It seductively protects current tenants.
But it’s pure parchment because it ignores the foundational reality: you cannot policy your way out of a supply shortage. There is no substitute for housing stock.
When rents can only rise 2% but inflation runs 5-7%, mortgages cost more, insurance skyrockets, and property taxes climb, what do small landlords do? They exit. Rental supply shrinks. The very people the policy aims to protect – the “average Punter” making €40,000 per year – can’t find housing at all.
Rent controls without massive housing supply are like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. You’re making existing passengers more comfortable while the ship steams toward the iceberg.
Vienna’s housing solutions are oft-mentioned and well-known in the housing community and recently in Irish news podcasts- and they work well. But-
Vienna’s rent controls work because Vienna has 60%+ public housing stock that sets market rates. Ireland is trying to achieve Vienna’s outcomes with 10% social housing. It’s mathematically impossible. Vienna has an ample supply of housing already, with a large portion of it publicly owned rental property. Ireland is in the difficult position of needing SUBSTANTIALLY more housing stock. Builders won’t build housing unless prices are at least stable or rising. Ireland is clearly behind the 8-ball with housing. In order to stabilise housing prices, the supply must at least approach the demand.
The real solution isn’t policy. It’s supply. And supply requires:
- Land (suburbs have it, city centre doesn’t)
- Transport and utility infrastructure to make suburban land valuable for development
- Planning reform to allow density near transport
- Time (which is why you start NOW)
Make it possible (and profitable!) for builders to BUILD. If you are dependent on private builders to solve a shortage, you must make it worth their while to do so. First, get out of their way. I’m not saying remove all oversight- think of it as an open factory- make it easy for them. Don’t negotiate against Ireland’s best interests.
Why American Government Structure Matters Here
One thing the American system gets right – when it’s not being abused – is executive power. The President, governors, mayors can actually DO things. They can make trade-offs, override agency objections, spend political capital for long-term good.
This power gets misused – constantly, egregiously. But the potential exists for real change when you have a leader who puts public good ahead of personal interest. Can Ireland muster this now?
Ireland’s parliamentary system, multiplied by 303 agencies with veto power, has created a situation where nobody can make the essential trade-offs. Collison is right: the power needs to flow back to elected officials who can be held accountable.
But here’s the key: those officials need to use that power for foundational infrastructure, not parchment policies.
If Ireland empowers its Taoiseach and housing minister to override agency objections, and they use that power to create more rent control schemes? You’ve changed nothing. The Titanic still hits the iceberg.
But if they use it to ram through LUAS extensions, Metro completion, and planning reform that allows density near transport? You’ve steered away from ‘disaster’.
Learning From California’s Suburban ‘Catastrophe‘
I’ve watched my native state squander its own liveability over 40 years. I’ve seen middle income suburban housing turn into tech monkey cages. I’ve watched families flee to Idaho and Texas because California forgot how to build. Instead, California built Bureau-kram.
Dublin has something California didn’t: warning. You can see the looming disaster before it unfolds. Ireland has the money to prevent it. You know what happens when you try to serve a knowledge economy with an outdated urban and suburban infrastructure.
The question is whether Ireland will recognise this as a pivot point moment. Will Ireland take the current trajectory? Will Ireland allow “housing policy” bureaucrats to rule? (Rent controls, tenant protections, process uber alles) while ignoring the infrastructure foundation that makes those policies sustainable?
Or will Ireland learn from California’s catastrophe by design? Learn from the mistakes of others. Please.
The LUAS lines aren’t just about transport. They’re about whether Dublin in 2045 has families living in homes, or tech workers living in monkey cages.
The iceberg is visible. The captain has been warned. The ship has money for a course correction.
What Ireland doesn’t have is time.
Build the transport infrastructure now, or explain to your grandchildren why they’re paying €3,500 a month to live in a subdivided shoebox an hour or more from their jobs, just like Generation Z in California.
The choice is that stark. And the window to choose is closing fast.
Devin Savage is a health care clinician, author of The DNA of Disaster: Catastrophe by Design, and inventor of the Archlifter™ cervical decompression device. He lives in Tübingen, Germany with his family and is currently analysing Dublin real estate woes – which sparked this examination of Ireland’s housing crisis.
*Bureau-kram. By this I take the German term Papierkram- and adapt it slightly to bureaucracy: It often relates to the seemingly endless and often overly complex forms and procedures required by authorities (a common experience in Germany due to its thorough administrative processes).
