In Ireland presently there is a housing and homeless crisis. A number of factors have led to this but among them is the retrenchment in local authority housing budgets and a concentration of private capital in commercial property. Since 2008, the housing budgets allocated to local authorities have been cut dramatically. This continues the decline in local government interest in housing management but is also an extension of an existing housing policy. The historic role of the state in house building is diminished. To further understand the extent of the current housing crisis, the spatial distribution of public housing is in need of examination. This paper, arising from doctoral work on religious landscapes, describes the spatial distribution of public- and municipally-funded housing in Dublin city. The distribution of urban public housing schemes remains a relatively underdeveloped aspect of geography in Ireland. Working with secondary data from the City Council and a number of other sources, it locates public and municipal housing in the city area during the period from the 1850s to 1980. The available data show a pattern of public housing provision which mirrors the development of Dublin as a city. The paper shows how the geographies of public housing have been marginalised in the city's development. The paper closes with a number of ideas for further research.