Authorities unlikely to use Nama-owned commercial property for housing

The successful takeover by housing activists of Apollo House, the office block in Dublin city centre occupied by homeless people since before Christmas, has led to a clamour of calls for Nama-controlled buildings to be released for housing.

However, with figures indicating that actual homes – houses and apartments – are in many cases, even in the capital, considered unsuitable for social-housing tenants, it is unlikely that empty commercial buildings will ever be brought into play for housing.

The levels of rejection of homes by rural local authorities is unsurprising, but with the housing and homelessness crises showing little sign of abating in urban areas, it is remarkable that so many homes offered by Nama were rejected by the four Dublin local authorities.

In freedom-of-information documents released to Fianna Fáil, the local authorities set out their reasons for rejecting Nama’s offers. In one case, Dublin City Council rejected 146 homes because they were in a single development in Dublin 13.

Councils rejected over 2,000 Nama homes for social housing

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“Given the existing local tenure mix, acquiring more would have led to over-concentration of social housing,” the council said.

Similarly, South Dublin County Council took just 65 apartments of 507 offered to it at Tallaght Cross, saying it had taken the decision "in the interests of sustainable communities" and with regard to the future management of development and the "overall financial cost of acquiring [the] entire development". The point being made there is that while the Nama homes are leased to local authorities at a discount, typically 20 per cent, they aren't free.

The short answer as to why local authorities reject large-scale social-housing-only developments is Ballymun. The longer answer is Ballymun, Jobstown, Darndale, O'Devaney Gardens and any number of other local authority developments around the State whose social problems are well known.

Fianna Fáil housing spokesman Barry Cowen says, however, that given the extent of the housing emergency, the "sustainable communities" principle needs to be relaxed.

“While a commitment to tenure mix in planning and development is important – and something we as a party are fully committed to – as a principle it is being applied far too rigidly on the ground by local authorities . . . There is clearly a trade-off between attaining a fully proportioned mixed-tenure development and providing social housing on the scale that is needed,” he says.

Taking what is on offer seems logical in an emergency, but quick fixes to housing solutions tend to come back to bite in the long term. There is, Cowen says, an alternative. “The question arises as to why local authorities did not acquire the developments and use them only partially for social housing, while renting the other units out as affordable housing or as private rented accommodation.”