Dublin plan aims to help address housing shortage in capital

There is a serious shortage of housing in Dublin at the moment that is leading to rising rents and increasing homelessness. The city needs about 4,200 new homes every year to keep up with the rising population. But last year just 900 homes were built, and this year is no better. This shortage is having a devastating impact on many people’s lives.

Housing and planning are key responsibilities of councillors and as we prepare our new development plan for Dublin city we have to get the balance right between encouraging housing supply and maintaining the highest standards for new homes.

The pre-draft development plan which is currently being considered by the city council members is an attempt to get this balance right. It also keeps the minimum size of one-bed apartments at 55sq m, two-bed apartments at 80-90sq m and three-bed apartments at 100sq m, which exceeds the current national minimum standards. Furthermore, the pre-draft plan proposes keeping the high standards for balcony size, storage space and floor to ceiling heights.

The pre-draft plan also includes a new proposal: to introduce a 45sq m studio apartment standard in managed rental schemes. These studio apartments will only be allowed in developments of over 100 units where extra on-site facilities will be required, for example, common rooms, study rooms and gyms. Only 7 per cent of units in these large schemes can be at this new studio size. The potential to develop these large schemes is generally restricted to the city centre and docklands area.

In the last five years, there have been only 14 schemes of over 100 units approved in Dublin. So the number of these new studio apartments will probably be less than 1-2 per cent of all new homes. Una Mullally (Opinion, August 3rd) wonders why these studio apartments should be reserved for renters.

Attractive proposition

A studio apartment would be an attractive proposition for many single people but not for families. A renter can move if their family circumstances change, but homeowners could get trapped in unsuitable accommodation and we want to avoid this.

This new studio standard has been described as a return to the shoebox standards of the past. This is an unfair comparison. In addition to the basic 45sq m, these new studio apartments will require a 6sq m balcony and 3sq m of storage space. So the actual size will be 54sq m.

If you look at the property market today, you can find city apartments for sale at 28sq m, almost half the size of the new standard, and that’s without any of the additional facilities.

A key change in the new plan is to reduce the number of lifts required in apartment buildings. The last plan required 85 per cent of apartments to have windows on two sides (dual aspect). This had obvious benefits but had the downside of requiring twice as many lifts for each building compared to national standards.

This has had a major impact on the cost of building apartments and has restricted designers from providing for sustainable density levels. But it has also had a direct impact on apartment owners and renters as it increased management fees by at least €500 per year for each apartment.

Management fees

It is proposed to adjust the requirement so that 50 per cent of apartments will be dual aspect. This will help keep management fees down and encourage more homes to be built, which will help keep rents down, while allowing designers to build to sustainable densities without compromising quality and standards.

The current standards do not allow north facing windows, if they are the only windows in an apartment. A lot of sites, however, afford unobstructed views of parklands, rivers and Dublin bay. I believe that for many people, if they have windows only on one side, they would prefer to be overlooking these views rather than overlooking the streets behind them. For that reason we are proposing to allow single-aspect north facing windows in exceptional circumstances like this.

In essence, these proposed adjustments are about keeping standards as high as possible, while standing up for the people who have no homes, or who are paying way beyond their means for their rent or their mortgage.

We need homes to be built in Dublin as quickly as possible, and I believe these proposals can help. The alternative is to do nothing and hope the situation changes, or we can wait until average rents rise high enough – closer to €2,000 per month – to bring home building to the level we need. I would rather not wait that long.

Cllr Andrew Montague is chairman of Dublin City Council's planning and international relations strategic policy committee