The Social and Affordable Housing Scheme may have been slow to get off the ground but the Department of the Environment and local councils are confident that thousands more units will be delivered in 2004 and 2005 compared with the very meagre 140 delivered in the first nine months of 2003, the latest date for which figures are available.

Schemes from the multi-award winning Clarion Quay to Shelbourne Park and Robswood in Malahide as well as Popintree, Lucan and Ballinteer all have elements of social and affordable housing in the mix. Many more are in initial planning. Contrary to the fears of many in the industry, so far there have been remarkably few negative headlines.

More Flexibility Needed

Under Part V of the Planning and Development Act, 2002, up to 20 per cent of a development must be given over to social and affordable housing. If not, under changes introduced in 2002, land or cash must be handed over in lieu. In reality, this is a moving target. Different councils have varying targets and policies. According to Hubert Fitzpatrick of the Irish Homebuilders Association, far more flexibility needs to be delivered.

“We would like the options set out in the legislation to be real options. We need to be able to pick from a menu rather than the local authority operating a veto,” says Fitzpatrick. “If this were the case the whole process would be a lot speedier.” He adds that it also works very well when the local authority comes in with land bank as recently happened with Shannon Homes 730 units at Castle Curragh. But housing managers dismiss this view.

According to Philip Murphy of South Dublin Couth Council, the flexibility is already in the strategy. The council mostly wants units but it has taken land for adjacent halting sites in Clondalkin and Tallaght and has also taken cash from a builder in Rathfarnham who was looking at a loss on the price he had paid for his land. “Initially many builders had a ‘not over my dead body’ approach but now they have realised it is not so bad,” he says.

Ciaran Coughlan, a builder in Cork who is putting up a massive development akin to Mount St Annes in Milltown in the Ursuline Convent in Blackrock, agrees.

“We reached an agreement in a couple of days and everyone was happy,” he says. “It was a very positive experience and ourselves, the council and the client will all end up better off.”

But the builders say not all councils are as flexible. Many point the finger at Dublin City Council which is widely rumoured to be strict and inflexible. Certainly Dublin’s target is for a 20% allocation split 50:50 between affordable and social, compared with say 17% to 3% in Meath. However, this does not always work out, says Dublin’s Dick Whelan.

Of the units he is expecting this year in central Dublin, 36 will be social and 67 affordable while in south east it is 32 social and 44 affordable. Only in north central around Cabra does the half split work with the council expecting 101 units of each type in the area. Other councils such as Fingal, South Dublin and Cork look for between 8% and 15% split between the forms depending on the location.

Lower Specification

The IHBA’s Hubert Fitzpatrick also warns that the measures will lead to lower specification houses and apartments across the country.

“A council may say that 10% of the units have to be affordable and the developer will often have to trim the spec. to bring the units in at what the council says is an affordable price,” he says.

Others say that the strictures can mean that more than 20% of the units in a scheme can be handed over while yet others complain that it invariably means a lower spec. building overall. But, in reality, high prices simply mean that many local authorities simply cannot afford to buy 20% of the properties even at existing land use values.

But there are still substantial numbers of affordable homes likely to become available in upmarket areas such as the Merrion Rd as well as Ballinteer, Rathgar and other more expensive areas of Dublin as well as areas such as Inchicore and Cabra. Further out of town there will be houses and apartments in Poppintree, Lucan, Applewood in Swords and Cardy Rock and Hamlet Lane in Balbriggan but, perhaps, the biggest volume will be in the Dunshauglin area.

Surprisingly, Meath has only allocated five affordable units in Kilmessin and Laytown. Housing executive Marie Byrne is expecting up to 1111 units this year with the bulk in the Dunshauglin area. Byrne says in some big developments, or those with very large homes, her preference after units is for land to build the land bank for the future. “Although we will take cash payments as well,” she adds.

Advantages

The advantages of qualifying for an affordable house are unambiguous. The affordable price is worked out by taking the current use value of the usually agricultural land, the cost of construction and an agreed level of profit for the builder. On average, there is likely to be a saving of some €50,000 but it can be far larger. Those qualifying for affordable homes, for example, will be able to pick up one bedroom units for €152,000 and 2 bed for €178,000 in Robswalls in Malahide compared with €368,500 and €414,500 for those that buy on the open market. However, the money is fully recoverable if the house is sold in 10 years. After that, there is sliding scale until year 20 when no more money is recoverable.

In the upcoming development by Lyonshall in the Ursuline Convent in Blackrock, Co. Cork the 45 affordable duplexes will go for around €140,000, around €100,000 less than the likely market price.

But these are all affordable units. Providing social housing which the tenant then rents from the local authority appears to be more problematic for many builders and developers. Some have compromised and agreed to developments such as the 21 social units given over to the elderly in Shelbourne Park. A similar scheme was agreed in Terenure but turned down by An Bord Planala.

Worries Misplaced

Padraic Kenny, law lecturer at UCG, who is writing a book on Housing Law and Policy in Ireland, says the worries are misplaced. “It is not as if these people have just come up from middle earth, they are already renting in local estates and just because they get onto a social housing list does not turn them into terrible people.” He adds that all the studies show that it does not make any difference at all to house values. “Some of this is a lot of scare tactics,” he says.

There is also a huge reluctance on the part of the builders and the different councils to name the developments with social housing or with traveller accommodation being built or planned, particularly with the local elections coming up in June.

“Providing traveller accommodation beside your private estate can still be tricky and we do not need this to blow up in our faces over the new few months,” one official says.

But South Dublin County Council’s Philip Murphy dismisses the fears as “propaganda nonsense and urban myth”. He insists that the council is happily working with almost all the bigger house builders to build traveller and other accommodation beside their housing schemes in areas from Tallaght to Lucan to Clondalkin. Of the several hundred units he is looking forward to this year, up to 40% will be social. There is also debate over whether to cluster or ‘pepper pot’ the social and affordable housing. Most councils say they have no real preference so long as the units are delivered.

Dotting social housing around the private units is also very difficult from a management point of view. Many management companies, particularly in apartments, have difficulty with it as some property occupiers would be paying the service charge and others would not.

But different developers also take different approaches in their different schemes. Bovale, for example, is likely to take the ‘pepper pot’ approach in its new 1,000 unit development in Poppintree while in Lyonshall in Cork has clustered the affordable duplexes in a few areas in its massive new development in the Ursuline Convent in Blackrock. In other areas, it is more contentious and it took months of discussion before community groups in Dublin's docklands reached an agreement with Treasury Holdings, the developers of Spencer Dock, that 15% of the social housing units would be in the main part of the development.

All the indications are that the developers are now ready to move ahead. “There has been some misunderstanding. But we are now seeing that the developers are in a hurry to get on and develop. They are doing deals,” says Meath’s Marie Byrne.

*Jane Suiter is a journalist with The Sunday Times