Opinion

Will Oscar Traynor site deliver public housing on public land?

What exactly do we mean by public housing and how can it be achieved?

Having reached an agreement on the tenure mix, how is the development going to be realised? Photograph: iStock

Alison Gilliland
Sun Oct 31 2021 - 15:35

There is no doubt that too many of our citizens are living in precarious housing situations, with long waits for social housing, high rents and too many living in emergency homeless accommodation.

There is a growing call for public housing on public land, a call I agree with, but what exactly do we mean by public housing? And, in particular, can this be achieved on the large Oscar Traynor lands site in north Dublin? This is the question that Dublin City Councillors (DCC) will debate on Monday evening.

The proposal on the table this time last year was to enter into a development agreement with Glenveagh Living Ltd to deliver 853 homes on this large site in north Dublin. It involved 30 per cent social housing homes, 20 per cent affordable purchase homes with the developer retaining 50 per cent of the homes for private sale. Glenveagh would also give €14 million to DCC and develop the associated community facilities, infrastructure and public realm, worth €30 million, as a sort of quid pro quo for the 50 per cent retained homes.

This proposal was rejected by the majority of councillors. Three years had passed since the initiation of the public procurement tender process that resulted in Glenveagh being selected as the successful tenderer and the housing crisis had got worse. Councillors couldn’t stand over half the homes on the site being sold off, potentially to an investment fund to be rented out at high market rents , or even rented back to DCC under the HAP scheme.

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A year on and the Glenveagh proposal is still in the picture as one of two possible options to developing housing on this site. So what has happened ?

Alternative proposal

After much discussion and compromise, a cross-party group of councillors proposed an alternative. It would involve more public housing in the tenure mix on the lands: 40 per cent social housing; 40 per cent cost rental; and 20 per cent affordable purchase. Having reached this tenure mix agreement, the question of how to realise the development arose.

The ideal would be State funding/loans and Dublin City Council leading the design and planning on the site and tendering for construction. This would allow overall control over the site and its development. The downside of this approach is the slow bureaucratic social housing approval process and the equally slow bureaucratic public procurement process that adds time to local authorities developing any site, big or small.

Other considerations include council capacity and future construction costs. Even with a generous €100,000 per unit Affordable Housing Fund subsidy for the social housing and affordable purchase homes, construction costs are high and with construction inflation running at 8.9 per cent, restarting the development might end up costing more.

The other option was to re-examine the Glenveagh tender to see if it could deliver the agreed tenure mix without legally compromising the original public procurement process. This is possible through the “purchase” of the 50 per cent private sale units – 10 per cent for social housing by DCC and 40 per cent for cost rental units by an Approved Housing Body (AHB).

Affordability

However, there are concerns about the affordability of the cost rental element. Cost rental schemes base their rents on the all-in costs of building and maintaining a development, generally over 30-40 years. Unlike social housing, cost rental rents are not, therefore, proportionate to tenant income. The DCC Emmet Road cost rental scheme anticipates rents for a two-bed apartment working out at €1,400 per month. The Glenveagh option anticipates €1,500 – not affordable for all, but more affordable for more. From a timeline perspective, having already gone through a protracted competitive dialogue public procurement tendering process, the Glenveagh option would be quicker to complete by at least three years.

To realise the development using the Glenveagh tender, councillors have to agree to dispose of the lands to Glenveagh. Some describe this as selling the land to Glenveagh and then buying back the housing they would build on it. From a technical perspective, agreeing to the disposal is agreeing to enter into a development agreement with Glenveagh to build out the site as per the original tender agreement, but with an additional agreement that the 426 private sale units would be bought by DCC and an AHB to realise the agreed tenure mix of 40 per cent social housing, 40 per cent cost rental housing and 20 per cent affordable purchase housing.

Title would pass to Glenveagh only on a phased basis and only on completion of the homes in accordance with the development agreement. This would allow for a “selling” transaction back to DCC and the AHB – a very convoluted way of paying for the homes built but one that complies with the original tender.

I would argue that both options realise public housing on public lands, even if neither is perfect. In a housing crisis, is a bird in the hand worth two in the bush? In a housing crisis, is the perfect the enemy of the good? Monday night we will decide.

Alison Gilliland is a Labour Party councillor and Lord Mayor of Dublin

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