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Una Mullally: Eoghan Murphy needs to get real on housing or get out

The solutions to this crisis are staring Fine Gael in the face. Build more social housing. Build more affordable homes

On the eve of Saturday’s Raise the Roof housing protest in Dublin, Minister for Housing Eoghan Murphy struck a tone-deaf note. Speaking on Newstalk, he said that “what we’re doing with co-living is bringing around another option, another choice for people”.

“Co-living” is property business marketing language for high-density bedsits, a setting few aspire to live in. The privileged live in a world of options and choices. That is simply not the reality for those caught in the housing emergency. It’s time for Murphy to get real, or get out.

At the housing protest, the solidarity across all areas of Irish society was evident; United Against Racism, the Dublin Renters Union, Irish Travellers Movement, Pavee Point, Mandate, Siptu, the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation, USI, Age Action, UCDSU, Opatsi (Operative Plasterers and Allied Trades Society of Ireland), MERJ (Migrants and Ethnic-Minorities for Reproductive Justice), and political parties including People Before Profit, Sinn Féin, the Green Party, and the Social Democrats, all marched. What was especially notable was the broad range of age groups protesting.

The solutions to this crisis are staring Fine Gael in the face. Build more social housing. Build more affordable homes. They just don’t want to do it. Murphy and his department’s enthusiasm for doing anything but that simple solution, is getting more ludicrous and insulting by the day.

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Over in Dún Laoghaire, Murphy’s co-living dream is working its way through the fast-track planning process. Bartra Capital Property Group is seeking permission for a “co-living” building on Eblana Avenue. As a “concept”, co-living is gleefully sweated over by investors and developers in cities around the world where rents are rising far beyond affordability.

What does this look like? In Dún Laoghaire, it looks like 42 people sharing a kitchen on one floor, 40 people sharing a kitchen on another floor, and 38 people sharing a kitchen on another floor. These “studio apartments” would be 16.25sq m in size.

Co-living space

“Shared living is taking off in Dublin and is seen as the ideal housing option for millennial tech workers,” Bartra’s website declares. “Co-working spaces such as WeWork, Dogpatch Labs and Iconic are now well established in Dublin, providing (mainly) millennial freelancers, contractors and remote workers with an alternative to working from home, or Starbucks. Hot on its heels comes co-living, which rounds out the concept by providing them with somewhere to lay their head as well.”

It’s already here. Dublin’s first co-living space, Node, opened last year on Pembroke Street, and filled up fast, with rents from €1,300 upwards. It is hard to know how much of its success is down to the accommodation crisis, and how much down to the concept, but founder Anil Khera made it clear he is looking for more properties in the city.

Housing crisis or concept? Who knows, who cares? “Dublin looks ripe for the concept,” we’re told. Naturally, the housing Minister gets a shout-out.

Last year saw something of a change in the Government’s mindset, with changes to the minimum apartment size guideline. The scene was set, in other words, for co-living. “It wasn’t possible to do this until Eoghan Murphy changed the planning code last year,” says Marie Hunt, executive director and head of research at CBRE. “Up until then, the planning code stated things like if you want to build an apartment it has to be much the same regardless of who was in it, with things like dual-aspect and a car-parking space whether you wanted it or not.”

There you have it.

This is what Murphy is now championing. Young people’s housing needs are not magically different from those who came before them just because a property company calls them “millennials”. But there’s money to be made, and property companies need people to fall for this spin so they can squeeze every cent of profit from every square metre. The result is a capital city relying on student accommodation, short-term lets and hotels – anything but decent, reasonably-sized homes. This will be this Government’s terrible legacy for years to come. It needs to stop now.

Superficiality over ability

Murphy has shown no evidence of any great ability, dependable competence or reliable authority to navigate a way towards housing solutions that are helpful, sustainable or desirable. This ineptitude and ineffectiveness has rightly marked him as the target of ire amongst his peers across the capital and the country. Devoid of big ideas, his position is nevertheless solidified by his friend Taoiseach Leo Varadkar. Murphy is loyal and has remained in his role. This triumph of superficiality over ability sees Murphy personify Fine Gael 2.0’s gravitation towards perception over proof.

I’m not excusing how previous ministers and governments with an older average age disregarded young people, but it is especially galling that a government with so much youth on its side is willing to screw over members of its generation so ruthlessly. Previously one could say that maybe ministers were out of touch, or didn’t understand the experiences of a younger generation. But Varadkar and Murphy are that generation. Why don’t they care?

The premise of youth in government is that generations that felt ignored or disconnected from older generations in power finally get a fair hearing. This Government needs to start living up to the promise of that premise.