Council plans 60,000 new homes

Dublin Corporation has adopted an ambitious new housing strategy which aims to provide 60,000 new units of social housing - such as those pictured - in the Dublin area between now and March 2005.

Dublin Corporation has adopted an ambitious new housing strategy aimed at ensuring the city plays its part in the provision of 60,000 new homes in the greater Dublin area, between now and March 2005.

This is the first part of what will be an integrated housing strategy for the Greater Dublin Area which includes counties Kildare, Meath and Wicklow. It takes advantage of the "windfall" of as much as 20 percent of all new developments for social and affordable housing.

The corporation says the strategy can satisfy the demand for housing contained in the 1999 County Development Plan and maintains the problem must be viewed in a regional context. It has therefore tailored its plans towards an integrated strategy to meet demand for 17,000 units in the Greater Dublin area each year.

The overall requirement for private, social and affordable housing in the city area alone will be slightly more than 4,000 units per year over the next four years, according to the housing strategy.

These homes will be provided mainly in the three main areas now left in the city for new development. They are the docklands, Pelletstown - roughly between the Tolka and the northside of the Royal Canal - and the area around Ayrfield, Baldoyle, on the border with Fingal County Council.

On the southside of the city where prices are prohibitive for all, but especially first-time buyers, the corporation offers higher densities coupled with a significant improvement in the quality and design of "multiunit dwellings".

Each of these three areas now has an "action plan" in place which was drawn up by the corporation and includes reference to public transport, shopping and social facilities as well as health and educational services.

According to the assistant city manager, Mr Philip Maguire, the housing strategy has the potential to effectively tackle the current housing crisis. In addition to the social planning, he points out that the strategy includes the provision of such infrastructure as the north fringe sewer which is to be available at the same time as the first homes are becoming available.

There must however be an expansion in the building industry to encompass the new building, he warned. "A step-up in building activity is definitely needed and if there is to be a dramatic increase in densities, and we plan that there would be, then there must be a step-up in quality of design, construction and aftercare," he said.

Mr Maguire said that while the Planning and Development Act 2000 requires property developers to hand over 20 percent of the zoned land in new developments to the local authority for social and affordable housing, there were areas in the city where the density made this inappropriate.

"In apartment developments which may be on small sized plots we would generally prefer to be allotted 20 percent of the housing units, but every development is a different case. Basically we have the right to negotiate," he said.

"What we have attempted to do was to remove some of the hurdles to house-building, to put in place the infrastructure so that large-scale building can go ahead immediately", he said. According to Mr Maguire the requirement for housing in the city has changed dramatically in a generation. The current average family is now about 2.7 or 2.8 people per housing unit, a far cry from the families of 10 and 11 of a generation ago.

Now people are living longer and the housing pattern has changed to one of a significant amount of "empty nesters".

"Where twenty years ago our housing requirement was being solved in Boston or elsewhere in the United States, some of these people now want to return while their children are comparatively young", said Mr Maguire. Consequently the strategy aims to provide for a "social mix" of different age groups and categories of households, including people with disability.

While it was vehemently opposed by Direct Housing Action, a coalition of housing activists, the corporation insists that the strategy has the potential to solve the housing crisis in the city.

According to Direct Housing Action there is not enough provision for the homeless, or protection for those in private rented accommodation, in the draft plan.

"It doesn't have any policy for solving the current housing crisis, it even admits that in five years' time the housing waiting list will remain as long as it is now", said an activist, Ms Nicola Coleman.

Ms Coleman also said just eight organisations had made submissions on the strategy, a factor which she said was due to an "unreasonable deadline". "In excess of 200 people were living rough on the streets in 2000 according to official figures; the real number might be much higher than that, while £99m (€125m) is paid to private landlords for accommodation by state services."

A Labour Party city councillor, Mr Kevin Humphreys, said the major issue he and his fellow party members had with the strategy was the breakdown of the 20 percent allocation for social housing. Mr Humphreys took the view that the split should be 75 per cent/25 per cent in favour of social housing.

"With 7,000 on the waiting list we can't do anything else," he commented. However, during the city council vote to adopt the strategy it was suggested that the levels might be 50 per cent social and 50 per cent affordable, of the total land acquired from developers.