Senior Dublin official says public housing should be open to all

Public housing should be opened up to households beyond the social housing waiting list, the State’s most senior housing official in the State has said.

Dick Brady, head of housing at Dublin City Council, is drawing up plans to open publicly-owned land to developers to build not only social housing but public rental housing which would be available to households who would not qualify for social housing.

There was a need to “start pushing on this”, he told an EU Commission conference on housing on Friday.

The "sheen has come of home-ownership", many people had been "badly hurt by the Celtic Tiger hangover" and there was now a "potential to change the rental sector which has become a fractured landscape."

Mr Brady said his officials had identified publicly-owned landbanks around the capital which could be used to attract large-scale investment into the rental sector, from investors seeking long-term, sustainable returns.

“We need to move away from the notion of social housing and towards the concept of public housing. Public housing would capture both those who have been squeezed out of home-ownership and those who would be housed by the local authority, into mixed tenure communities.”

He said the key was to “marry” the roles of housing developers and housing managers for the public good, and a number of models could be looked at.

In all cases the land would remain publicly-owned and interested developers - who could be trusts, housing associations, trade-unions or developers – would build the units of accommodation. Ten per cent of the units would be provided to the local authority as social housing, as under Part V rules.

The remaining 90 per cent of units would be let, on a cost-rental model, as public housing to households who could not afford to buy and who faced insecurity of tenure in the private rented market. They would be offered long-term leases and certainty of affordable rent.

Developers would get guaranteed rental income and profitable returns over the period. Ownership of these units may revert to the local authority at the end of a period, of for example 30 to 50 years.

Rents may be calculated on the basis of income, or could be based on the Housing Assistance Payment (HAP) system which is being piloted in a number of local authorities to replace rent supplement. Tenants in receipt of HAP may work unlike those in receipt of rent supplement.

Mr Brady said developers may feel such projects were risky he believed “the risk can be mitigated by integrating some level of security into the project, such as with insurance. If we can divorce the risk away from a State guarantee we are up and running”.

The local authority could be tasked with building units of affordable rental units.

The development of a "national policy" to attract investment into "affordable rental accommodation" is one of the actions committed to in the Social Housing Strategy 2020, published in November last year by the Minister for the Enviro nment, Alan Kelly.

“We haven’t got too much time to sit around talking about this,”said Mr Brady. “We need to start pushing on it.”