What are you excited about? Your summer holiday? The Uefa Champions League final this weekend? Or maybe it's the prospect of spending upwards of €1,300 a month for a space not much bigger than a small hotel room, with a kitchen to be shared by more than 40 people, that – to paraphrase Minister for Housing Eoghan Murphy – is tickling your fancy.
The Minister got more than he bargained for when he dared to suggest that people should be “excited” at being able to get “less space for less rent” in new co-living developments.
What’s not to love about having a double bed that folds up during the day, or having 40 people sharing a kitchen, or having to lock away your butter and milk into a little cage in a communal fridge as is the case in similar units in London?
If the rents on the units were affordable they may well be right to be excited. But for a worker on the average wage of about €40,000, they can expect to pay about half of their after-tax income for these spartan conditions.
It's easy to put the boot into something new, and something that those of a certain age would run screaming from
Co-living developers say they’re bringing the concept of house-sharing into the 21st century, offering trendy, open-plan living areas, replete with cinemas, common rooms and roof-top spaces for early morning yoga for the millennial generation. They’re responding to an age of “suspended adulthood”, when people are not quite ready to embrace home ownership or live on their own.
But they’re also property companies trying to maximise profits, and the more people you can squeeze into a development, the more money you can make from them.
Active concept
While co-living is already an active concept in Dublin – see the Node on Upper Pembroke Street, where rents start at €1,300 for a double ensuite in a shared apartment – it’s set to spread in a big way, following the passing of new regulations last year.
Bartra, the developer founded by Richard Barrett, caused the biggest stir when it announced plans to create a unit with 208 bedrooms in Dún Laoghaire, while it's considering similar plots in Castleknock and Rathmines.
But it’s not just Bartra. The UK’s largest co-living company, The Collective, which charges rents starting at €1,228 a month for a tiny ensuite bedroom with a shared kitchenette, recently acquired a site on Fumbally Lane in the Liberties.
In Limerick, the chair of the Government-backed Land Development Agency, John Moran, is working in a personal capacity on transforming a Georgian building into a co-living space, offering renters "a more fun way to live" he says.
Now, it’s easy to put the boot into something new, and something that those of a certain age would run screaming from. But for people moving to a new city and finding it difficult to get a home, or make friends, booking into a co-living space for a fixed period of time can ease you into a new place.
Housing shortage
However, charging close to what you’d pay for a one-bed apartment for somewhere with tiny personal space – regardless of the cinema or games room – at a time of a chronic housing shortage, which means that people may be unable to move on, is something altogether different. Particularly when the Minister for Housing is so keen to embrace the trend.
The parents of “co-livers”, for example, will recall that in 2013, so-called bedsits or pre-1963 units that had shared bathrooms and landlord-controlled heating were outlawed.
Such units were in many ways substandard but they were also cheaper – the average monthly rent for such a unit at the time was €440, or €27 below the average weekly rent of an unskilled worker. But the arrival of new minimum standards for the rental market meant that many of these units were removed, as they were required to have their own bathrooms, fridges and ovens.
Tiny units
Fast forward to today and government policy is providing for the construction of such tiny units once more. This time, under new apartment guidelines introduced in March 2018, the minimum size for a co-living space is just 12sq m - akin to a small hotel room – and, while they must have their own bathrooms, kitchens and other living areas can once more be shared. They are also a lot more expensive than previous shared units ever were.
The Government has also sought to remove other restrictions to their construction. Part V of legislation, which requires a proportion of new builds to be made available for social housing, won’t apply to co-living units.
Neither will rent controls, as newly built developments are exempt from the rules that limit rent increases to 4 per cent a year. And, as you won’t be a “tenant” of the space, you won’t have the protection of the Residential Tenancies Board. Instead, you’ll become a member of the co-living space under a licence agreement.
Between pricey student pads, serviced apartments, luxury build-to-rent lets and now costly co-living units – construction is undoubtedly being skewed toward the most lucrative sectors of development.
If the Minister really wants to get people “excited”, maybe he could encourage developments that people actually want to live in and can afford.
