To buy my first house two minutes down the street from traveller housing initiative?

[MelMar1]

Please give me advice.
I’m sale agreed on a new build house in Dublin . I found out that there is a new traveller housing initiative going in right across the road from me. Please don’t say I’m being snobby I’m really not. I’ve just heard stories of anti social behaviour etc. I know there’s always some lovely people but I’m nervous.

Do I give the house up because of this? It’s a substantial amount of houses for the traveller scheme all together - six very large detached four bedroom homes. It is two minutes walk from me. I drove up to the development to see and the traveller housing initiative is not in front of me directly as I thought. It is not in front of or behind me but about 2 minutes walk down the road. I can only see gable end of one of the houses from mine. Not directly facing.
I need to sign contacts in 2 days and I am so torn.
Otherwise it’s perfect house for me. With this information are you saying yes or no?

I would pull out I’m afraid. You’ll find somewhere else eventually.

Huge amount of personal experience. Left wing all my life. Wouldn't do it. No, no, no, no!

Are you living in Ireland or England?

I would have agreed with you in the past and think it’s all racist nonsense, until I moved to Ireland 20yrs ago and my lived experience tells a different story.

Irish traveller families are a law unto themselves and treat their animals appallingly. The govt. is trying to ban Sulky racing as it’s incredibly dangerous towards other road users and the poor horses are raced until they die. It’s sickening.

And why do you think the council bought the other properties from the developer if new build houses are at such a premium?

And why did the previous potential buyer of your property reallypull out.

As another poster mentioned think ahead a few years to when you want to sell and move on. A house purchase is the largest amount of money you will ever spend. Think of it like an investment as well as a place to live.

See Dale Farm, and Rathkeale Co. Limerick. Amongst many others.

Settled people (non Travellers) are called are "Country People" by Travellers. So it's us that are apart in their eyes I think.

I'm OK with them TBH as long as they are not on my doorstep. I think the vast majority of "Country People" would agree. That's reality given the reports and actual evidence of violence, dirt, non education of children, teen marriage, DV, animal cruelty and just well, a totally different way of life to settled people. Integration means one or other has to bend and that doesn't happen very often. It's their culture. So we are told by Pavee Point and the likes. Not many settled people will want to bend to a Traveller culture will they?

Sooner or later the savvy Travellers will settle huge swathes of new housing all to themselves, since settled people won't want to be there. And that is going against the policy of mixing and integrating. Sometimes it's impossible.

I live about 300 yards from a traveller site - never had any problems per se and they are very friendly / chatty if they happen to be outside when you go by.

But saying that we do get 14 year old lads zooming around the roads at 60mph on dirt bikes! looks like great fun to be fair, if slightly illegal!

I’m not sure it’s racism though.

A traveller camp semi-regularly occupies land at the top of my road and it brings with it a whole world of anti-social behaviour. Dirt bikes and quad bikes race up and down the road at night. Houses on my street have plants ripped up and thrown in the road. Dogs run in the street, obviously no one gets the mess up. The local shops enforce a numbers rule so they can try and manage shoplifting. And the site itself is left in a disgusting state when they leave. If you try and have a word with the parents they flat out deny that it’s their children ragging bikes into the early hours of the morning.

I love the idea of the travelling life, and the family bonds seem unshakeable. That must be nice. But when so many people report similar or identical patterns of behaviour, I don’t think that makes us racist.

As an Irish person I wouldnt go through with it unfortunately. You’ve likely paid a very inflated price for this house (knowing the market) and if the development becomes anti social it will, in the long run, devalue your home.

@babylamb4

i’m sorry, it must be horrible reading for you. But can you not see that “we’ll just have to carry on…and you guys will have to clean up after us” is kind of part of the issue?

By the way, I grew up in a village that had a successful traveller visit on the village green every year - it was a travelling circus. The kids went to school for a couple of weeks with us and lots of people went to the circus (might not meet with the approval of mumsnet now!). Everything was left beautifully - I guess there was the long term incentive to ensure that people wanted to buy tickets, but it was a successful partnership.

Agree with this. The last sentence says it all. 'We' whomever 'we' are (quiet, law abiding people that just want to live our lives in peace?) deserve all we get.

It's basically an embittered tag line.

@babylamb4

Unfortunately people's experiences with the traveller community tend to be overwhelmingly negative for reasons already mentioned, it is not a case of prejudice. A family member is manager of a hotel chain and they refuse to host traveller weddings because the venues have been trashed. These would be very lucrative functions for the company involved but they have been badly burned in the past so refuse to host them.
Perhaps if the traveller community respected the rest of society, their surroundings and the law then the problems they have with "prejudice" would not occur.

Absolutely not. Abort mission!

If ever you needed proof OP…..

I live by a large open space in the south-east of England and every summer we get at least 2 incursions onto the park. Anything up to 30 caravans arrive and when I'm walking my dog, I have to dodge cars speeding across the park, put up with sexual overtures (I was threatened with sexual assault by one of the travellers a couple of years ago), avoid human excrement and litter. When they leave, the amount of litter (throwing bin bags of rubbish into a beautiful little dell) and excrement is insane. They tear up a beautiful public space with their speeding, deliberately driving over cricket pitches and the like. I've lived in my house for nearly 20 years and not once has there been an incursion that was peaceful and left tidy afterwards.

Same.

Absolutely pull out . We lived near a travellers camp in the UK and the problems we had were unbearable. We are Irish too !

I wouldn't. Even if everything was fine (which is possible), I would imagine you might find it very hard to sell.

I had a house with location issues. The property itself was lovely, and I just didn't see or chose to dismiss the issues that friends and family pointed out when I was considering purchasing. It was dismaying when I came to sell to find out so many people were dismissing it and I had to sell at a very low price to eventually get out and move on.

Oh I have a fan 🤗 who follows me from post to post. Hi 👋🏼

Huh?

We were on a couple of the same threads. Yesterday. You are memorable. 5 dogs living outside and one just had 8 pups that you’re selling for £2.5k each. Memorable

as for a fan? 😀

as estate agent told me that previous buyers loan fell through and you believe this?

OP, just be glad you found out about this before you committed yourself.

i get that but when you live with racism and read people being so open about it, its kind of what they deserve.

Also, circus and fair ground people are not travellers. They are showmen. Nothing to do with us.

Incidentally while someone could certainly be unfairly discriminatory to Irish Travellers,,you can't technically be racist since they are not a separate race
They are ethnically identical to other Irish people

I wouldn’t. Location, location, location..

You may end up having social issues in the community such as crime, noise and rubbish.

Keep looking but I wouldn’t buy that house.