Living in a modern apartment block should be a pleasure, but it brings plenty of problems, not least a lack of support. Edel Morgan reports.
The Fraads are a rare species in Ireland. They chose to live in a city-centre apartment instead of the traditional family idyll of a suburban house with gardens front and back. According to Eric Fraad, a New Yorker, he and his Irish wife, Catríona O'Leary, not only moved into a two-bedroom flat in Temple Bar when she was heavily pregnant but also brought the concept of apartment life to its most literal level. Both their sons, three-year-old Davy and three-month-old Zack, were born in the flat.
"When we returned to Dublin I wanted to rent an apartment in Temple Bar because it's the closest there is to SoHo or downtown New York. It's a cultural part of town, and there's a nice feel to it."
For Fraad, who is director of the Ark children's cultural centre, just around the corner, there are many wonderful aspects to living in the area. Among them is the convenience of living so near to work, the weekend organic-food market and the stroll to his favourite café on a Sunday afternoon, when the streets are quiet.
But he criticises what he regards as the authorities' lip service to apartment living. "I don't believe there is any real commitment to having people living in the inner city. To create a community who love living in the city, [who don't\] just tolerate it, you need to sanction laws that promote a culture that allows people to live here."
He accepts that with city life come glimpses of the seamier side of urban life - and a need to live with the constant hum of traffic and the nee-naw of sirens - but he wonders why it's acceptable for construction work to start near people's homes in the early hours.
"In New York there is a sophisticated culture of apartment living, because most people live in apartments, and somehow it really works. If you disturb the peace by putting on a stereo at 4 a.m., believe me the police will be at your door very quick. Here you call the gardaí and they don't do anything about it."
His family had to decamp to a relative's house in Malahide, up the coast in north Co Dublin, one night because of the relentless blare of an alarm in a business premises beneath that nobody responded to.
He says his apartment, in the West End of Temple Bar, is intelligently designed but, at less than 1,000 square feet, is becoming too small for their needs. Surprisingly, the lack of a garden or play area for the children is not an issue. "People have looked at us strangely when we told them we didn't have a back garden. I was starting to feel guilty and thinking, my God, I could be arrested for not having a back garden. If you were living in a multimillion-dollar apartment on Park Avenue you'd have Central Park as your garden.
"Myself and my three-year-old have great adventures in the parking lot and in the basement. It's pretty cool; we make up wonderful stories and sometimes take a walk to St Patrick's Cathedral, which has lovely grounds."
Apartment life has traditionally been a stopgap for young professionals about town until they graduate to the leafy suburbs to bring up families. But a softening of the rental market over the past year has seen more families move into private accommodation, as landlords become readier to accept tenants they might have avoided during the boom.
Unlike the Fraads, many families living in city-centre apartments are not there by choice, according to Patrick Burke, director of the housing charity Threshold. They often have to rent apartments built during the urban renewal of the 1980s and 1990s and geared towards the investor market, he says. "It's a position they are forced into. They may be on a local-authority housing list and in the meantime are being supplemented by social welfare in the private rented sector. The rent supplement is often capped and is not enough to get decent-quality accommodation."
It is much rarer for families to buy apartments, but that may soon change. The suburban semi once accounted for 85 per cent of new homes, but that number is down to less than 5 per cent, with apartments and town houses taking precedence since the introduction of the high-density development guidelines.
"To create a vibrant community you need a blend of people, and that includes families," says Jim Barrett, Dublin City Council's head architect. "It is an aspiration and we have tried to impose it, but it hasn't worked out that well. What is happening is that three-bedroom, 90 square-metre apartments are being bought by single people and young married couples, and families are not attracted in."
As for Eric Fraad's charge that the authorities are not committed to apartment life, Barrett says that cultural change is the only solution and that it will come only with the next generation.
"It's down to balance. You might have one family in an apartment surrounded by eight single people making noise. When there is a bigger percentage of families in the city you can bring in by-laws that say you can't make noise after a certain time. It will happen in time."
Peter Coyne, chief executive of Dublin Docklands Development Authority, believes the market will dictate what happens. "Inner-city life for families is achieved in other cities, why not in Dublin? It is normal for families to live in inner-city social housing, but what we are not seeing is people buying apartments to bring up families. All you can do is ensure the docklands is in place for people and facilitate families who want a good apartment, good private space, safe streets and good local shopping and schools. The market will dictate the trend. Suburban housing is becoming more expensive and difficult to get. It's about changing habit and expectation."
A report by the economist Peter Bacon for Treasury Holdings, which is building 3,000 apartments at Spencer Dock, estimates potential for 6,000 high-specification apartments in central Dublin, which it defines as the area between North Circular Road, Grand Canal Basin, Parkgate Street and Heuston Station. It forecasts that the local population will grow to 18,225 by 2007 and to 38,560 by 2012; the size of the average household is likely to fall to 1.87 people by 2012, it says.
The report was produced in tandem with a study contending that there is still a strong rental market for top-notch apartments. The analysis is based on data compiled and supplied by the Hooke & MacDonald estate agency.
But the high-specification apartments referred to in the report are often out of the reach of many families, says Gerry Fay, chairman of the North Wall Tenants Association and a member of the North Docklands Community Group.
"Most of the apartments at Spencer Dock are being marketed as luxury, and once they build luxury there is a subtext. It raises the bar and gives them exclusivity. You could call it a form of economic cleansing."
He says the social-housing element of these schemes is often "at the back of the boiler house, so to speak, away from the private element. In one docklands scheme the children in the social apartments have not been allowed on the green area between them and the private apartments. Instead they play in the halls, in the lift and on the stairs".
Michael Noonan, a property-management consultant, says that many complexes are not geared towards children and other residents can be less than tolerant.
"The terms of most leases almost prohibit having children around. They are not supposed to make noise and run around unsupervised, and from an insurance point of view playgrounds are astronomical. When there are no real areas to play, common areas tend to get damaged."
Of course apartment living is not just a Dublin phenomenon. Gina Wood, her husband and daughter, now aged seven, rented a two-bedroom apartment in Drogheda, Co Louth, for more than two years. They have since moved to a house, "because it began to feel like a cage". Wood says: "We couldn't let the little one out. It wasn't safe, as there were cars going in and out of the parking lot all the time. And we wouldn't let her out on the balcony, which was a bit flimsy and unsafe. It is natural for children to want to invite friends over to play, and you end up in an apartment with four kids under your feet."
Washing and drying clothes was also a problem. "We used what little space we had on the balcony for drying clothes, so the dryer was going constantly, which was very expensive."
The outlook isn't all bleak, however. A new generation of apartments is being built for the long term, according to Noonan, who cites a scheme in Blanchardstown, in Co Dublin, that he says works for families.
"It has a couple of acres of grass and field but is fortress-like, so children are safe from the road. People want to live there because it is near a shopping centre and amenities.
"Apartment blocks can be sterile, and people often don't meet their neighbours, but when you have kids people get chatting and get to know each other," adds Noonan. "The children might be the bane of the caretaker's life, but you might have little Irish kids running around with little Zambians or Russians or kids from Burkina Faso. It's lovely to see them playing and integrating."
How the other half lives
Renting an apartment in Berlin is a dream compared with renting one in other large cities, such as London or New York, where you imagine that desperate renters must scan the obituaries or bribe printers to see the classified ads before the newspapers go on sale.
Berlin has 1,874,313 apartments, or 553 for every 1,000 people. As many as 13 per cent of them are empty in some areas; in other capitals less than 1 per cent are vacant. Most of the city's apartments are in Altbauten, late-19th-century buildings with old-style hallways and apartments with 12-foot ceilings, stucco plasterwork, original hardwood floors and balconies.
A typical apartment covers 65-70 square metres (700-750 square feet), has two large rooms as well as a kitchen and bathroom and costs about €500 a month in a good neighbourhood, generally including utilities. A small, 35 square metre (375 square foot) one-room apartment with separate kitchen and bathroom costs about €300 a month.
The inner city of former East Berlin is now one of the most expensive rental neighbourhoods, but it is still cheap by Dublin standards. Ruth Elkins, a journalist from London, has just moved into a five-room, 135 square metre (1,450 square foot) apartment near the upmarket Friedrichstrasse. It costs €1,400 a month. "Myself and my roommate were just astounded when we walked around. We're now officially spoiled: we can't live anywhere else."
Many young couples have taken advantage of low interest rates to buy apartments. A photographer friend and her husband have just bought one in Charlottenburg, the most upmarket neighbourhood in western central Berlin. The 120-year-old flat has six rooms and a balcony spread over 165 square metres (almost 1,800 square feet). It cost €195,000.
Charlottenburg and neighbouring Wilmersdorf, where one in 10 Berliners lives, is one of the most family-friendly neighbourhoods, and a third of households have children under 18. But most families tend to live in larger apartments or houses on the outskirts of Berlin or in Potsdam, the capital of the neighbouring state of Brandenburg.
Tenancy laws are heavily weighted in favour of renters, allowing them a three-month notice period regardless of the length of the lease, whereas landlords may have to give up to two years' notice. One useful law allows tenants to pressure a landlord to do repairs by deducting a portion of the rent until the problem is solved.
Berlin is a rare beast: a renter's market where you can turn down apartments simply because they're on a loud street or not south-facing and sunny. It's enough to reduce Dubliners to tears. - Derek Scally
