Nama considers offering 500 apartments as social housing despite council decision

Up to 500 apartments, due to become available in the Tallaght area of Dublin in the autumn, may be offered to people on social housing waiting lists from outside

the county, under radical proposals being considered by Nama, the Housing Agency and the Department of the Environment.

The move is being seen as a way of bringing more housing units, currently being managed by Nama, into social housing use, as part of the Government’s efforts to address the housing crisis.

It could mean households on waiting lists in council areas other than South Dublin County Council – such as Dublin City, Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown and even Kildare – could be offered homes in Tallaght.

A senior source said the move was part of the “broadening on the response to homelessness”. It could be replicated in other parts of the State.

“It has emerged as a possibility in discussions between the Department [of the Environment] and Nama that units which had been turned down by one local authority could be reoffered to adjacent or nearby local authorities.”

Resistance

The source said such an initiative could meet resistance from local authorities who would be receiving households from other areas into dwellings they had previously ruled out.

The National Assets Management Agency said last week it would transfer about 1,100 units to local authorities and housing bodies for social housing by the end of the year. Chief executive Brendan McDonagh said the agency had identified a further 1,000 units that had been rejected by local authorities due to concerns about an overconcentration of social housing in individual locations.

He said 500 of these units which had been rejected could be “back on the table”. “We are in discussion with the Housing Agency and local authorities. Because of the crisis they are looking at revising their guidelines [on concentration of social housing],”he said.

The 500 apartments in question are at Tallaght Cross, part of an ambitious development of two hotels (now both closed), shops, restaurants and apartments built by the troubled developer Liam Carroll, near the Square shopping centre. The apartments are currently undergoing extensive remedial works and are on track to be ready in the autumn. They comprise the single biggest lot of housing Nama has offered for social use. Nama had offered the 500 units to South Dublin County Council (SDCC) but they were ruled out partly due to concentration concerns and also because of the extensive remedial works needed.

Buy

out The council did however secure

€15 million from the developer as a buyout of their Part V obligations – where a proportion of the development must be put aside for social and affordable housing – and this has been ringfenced for social housing elsewhere in the area.

When contacted last week and asked about Nama’s statement that the 500 units were “back on the table”, the council’s housing section said: “We are not in discussions with Nama about 500 units of housing.”

It is unlikely the council would want to house 500 households from its waiting list in one location given concentration guidelines.

Billy Coman, SDCC head of housing, said he would be interested in leasing a number of the units. The council, which has 7,700 households on its waiting list – an increase of 25 per cent since May last year – is regarded as one of the more energetic in terms of its record on securing social housing.

Local authorities generally operate to a national guideline that no more than 20 per cent of dwellings in an already existing private estate should be given over to social housing, though Minister for Finance Michael Noonan last week urged local authorities to reconsider this maximum, saying, if they did, more Nama units would be available to tackle the social housing problems.