Brendan Kenny, Dublin City Council's Housing Strategy
This Is Where We Live: Brendan Kenny, Deputy Chief Executive, Dublin City Council, with responsibility for housing and community services.
In this podcast in the This Is Where We Live series Brendan Kenny, who is in charge of Dublin City Council's housing policy and strategy gives his take on why housing has become such a challenge for the city and how, in his view, a regional integrated plan is needed, across Dublin City and County and the surrounding counties.
Find out more about DCC Housing here
www.dublincity.ie/housing-and-community
Transcript: Brendan Kenny, Dublin City Council's Housing Strategy
We all know Dublin City is in a protracted housing and homelessness crisis. Dublin's waiting list for housing is touching 18000 and over 66 percent of all homelessness in the country is in the capital city. So over the last year on this podcast, we've been exploring the reasons why housing has become one of the biggest challenges facing not just Dublin, Ireland itself. We've also been looking out for some of the potential solutions. We've spent time with Dr. Daithí Downey of Dublin City Council's Housing Observatory looking at cost rental projects and what's been called affordable housing and how the Vienna model is influencing city planning here. But we also wanted to get a sense of the vision behind housing policy at Dublin City Council and to see how it sees the future of public housing here in the city.
I'm Helen Shaw. And you're listening to This is Where We Live, a podcast series about how we shape and create great places to live. And in particular, how we face up to the challenge of providing homes for the people who live here. So with that in mind, I sat down in the civic buildings that Wood Quay with Brendan Kenny. Now he's the deputy chief executive at Dublin City Council and the man responsible for housing and community services in Dublin. Brendan, you know, as you know, we've been doing this as a podcast. I started nearly a year ago. I know it was nearly Halloween because I was recording at Griffith Avenue with all the leaves with Joe Brady from UCD. You know, like the podcast is about this is where we live.
And from your own perspective, I know you're not a Dubliner. So give me a little bit of your own background. Where did you grow up?
I was born and reared in county Mayo and there in a small village near Knock. But I'm in Dublin since nineteen seventy four, so I'm longer obviously in Dublin than I ever was a Mayo. And I would always support the Dubs in Croke Park, except when they're playing Mayo. Well I'm working in Dublin City Council since 1979 and virtually all of that in housing. And would be one of the few people that would have stayed up my whole career in housing in various parts of housing. And then in 2007 moved for five years to Limerick to work on the regeneration programme down there. And I returned in 2012. When I came back, I didn't return directly to housing. I returned to culture, recreation, sport. Those kind of issues that the city council has. And in 2016, I came back to housing. So overall, I've spent probably about 35 years working on housing in Dublin City. So a lot of experience, a lot of different experience over the years and different cycles.
Because it's fascinating just to think how much the city, the population, everything has changed in that period.
Well, if you think back to 1979 and say the early 80s when I was working in Dublin city council at the time, it was a totally different city. There were some bad housing estates. Ballymun was still standing and the issues were beginning to develop in Ballymun. It was difficult to to let properties and a big change to what it is now. There was plenty of properties. There was plenty of allocations. I worked as an allocation officer, I worked as the homeless officer. And we just couldn't give away the apartments at that time. And when you have a situation where there is it's hard to allocate dwellings, it makes it very difficult - you have all kinds of issues, apartments being burned out, houses being burnt out, anti-social behaviour and all that - in some ways, when you have a situation like what we have in that few years when there's a lack of supply, it makes estate management easier. And then the money started coming into the system and then the notion of regenerating Ballymun and the Fatima Mansions. These places that were really, really awful at the time came into it. And you get to a situation where there was plenty of money and the real pressure was coming from the government and from the department. Why can't we spend money faster? And then all of a sudden they changed again when you know there's no money around and we tend to go through these cycles. And also the cycle, you know, coming up to say to 2008 when the recession came big time, everything stopped. And we tend to do this. We go from one extreme to another in this country. We stopped building altogether, hardly any building, even private sector in the public sector. And then we're surprised. And ten years after that, we have such a housing crisis, it was inevitable.
Families continue to expand the population continues to expand, more foreign nationals coming into the country. And there was damn all housing being built in the private sector. So that's it was inevitable in a crisis like this that when you stop doing things and you turn off the machine, I takes a good while to turn back. And when things started to improve in 2014, 2013, it really is only in the last couple of years that the money and resource have come back into the system. But back in the early eighties, some of these conditions in our houses were very, very poor and we just couldn't allocate units and that brought is on problems, places, low demand areas where people anybody could come in first person to come to the counter could, get a place. And we weren't strong in estate management at that time, it's only in the 2000s that we started putting in in proper resources and proper structures around estate management out in the ultimate areas. And I remember when when John Fitzgerald became the city manager, it was in the early 90s. I remember one of the first things he said was we're gonna have to do something with Ballymun, that It's awful and we have to put structures out there. And I was the first person to go out. So I went I was in 1986 development. I was the first area manager out there. And the period during the short period that it was out there. The minister at the time was Brendan Howlin. And I remember the Taoiseach, John Bruton, and the local minister was Proinseas DeRossa. At they all came out and announced the demolition of Ballymun, which was a huge milestone. So the economy was going well at that stage. That was 1996 and the regeneration of Ballymun. It was only complete in the last couple of years. So it takes a long time to go to all those kind of projects happening. Fatima Mansions is another one. You know, the demolition of St Michael's Estate, O'Devaney Gardens, Dominic Street and we've gone through the ppp process, during that period
The public private
public private partnership and we had a solution to solve all those. And all of a sudden the recession came, and they all got dropped and they were dropped for several year - However, the good thing that happened during that period is that as the city council continued with the de-tenanting process, people continue to move out so that when the money came back, we had free sites. We have land now where there's no no apartments standing and we can actually develop them the proper way. Whereas if they were still standing, it would take years and years to do it. So some progress was made.
It's kind of interesting maybe to come to where we are now over this year, 2019 and think about, I suppose, how we move forward, because in many ways it's impossible. There's no magic wand. There's no ability to sort of magic away a lot of policy factors around this. And sadly, probably if there is a no deal Brexit or we ended up in that crisis, I think everybody expected we'd almost go back into a boom to bust cycle again. So kind of wondering in this period, given that legacy of experience you have. Can you give us a sense of where the vision is now for housing in Dublin City Council? Can you give us a sense of what your priorities are now taken, as you say, that there are maybe faultlines in where we've come from, the recession, the boom to bust and now emerging out of that into hopefully a period of stability. But little bit of how you see Dublin City Council now putting forward its vision for the city and housing provision in a man has to be around supply.
That's a really big issue. There's a serious lack of supply. And we have a situation, a situation like that. It's actually difficult to actually look at reform of housing so badly needed, like as a country and as a city we're so reliant on mortgages and people getting up to their necks in mortgages, noose around their necks for years and years a very dysfunctional private rented sector. But in the main, we need to get more and more houses built. They're expensive, whether they're private rented, whether they're by to rent or whatever and what sort of housing is needed. We realise also It's a very political issue is probably really without Brexit. It probably would be the hottest political issue in the country. It is. It's near the top as it stands at the moment. Sometimes it's very difficult to get real facts out there. You know, you hear some of the people saying that we should build like what we did back in the 70s. Thousands and thousands of social houses. It was a totally different era. We had land we had land right around the city and land in Tallaght and Clondalkin and was far easier to build - we didnt have the health and safety, we didnt have the public procurement rules that that we have now. And at the moment, Dublin City Council, we own 120 hectares of land in the city that's suitable for housing and 96 hectares of that it's already in the pipeline being done, being designed and the remainder, then, is situated in areas of the city, where there is a very high concentration sort of housing. So regardless of the crisis, it would be madness to go out and build high rise, high density housing in those areas. But the other thing which gets missed out a lot is that at the moment there are thirteen hundred social housing units under construction in the city between ourselves and approved housing bodies. That's another fifteen hundred a tender stage. There's 1800 at capital press state there's another 2000 at plenary State. That's the highest level activity since the mid 90s - but it's too slow. It's taking too long. The whole process is it's very complicated, but it is coming and will make a difference. What we need is the private sector to be building the private sector are not really building because it's not really valuable for the private sector because they can't get people to buy them. So that only the main viability around there is built to rent so you can have a lot of the big investment companies coming in. So at the same time, we're very conscious that are we're trying to fix the system using the same kind of models and the same kind of housing systems that in the past we really need badly to reform housing big time in this country. And in Dublin, it's very difficult to do it when it's all short term planning that's going on. There's a lot of panic and there's a lot of pressure about homelessness. And the figures are produced every month. There isn't that much time, but there is insufficient time for people to be thinking about what's gonna happen the next five years or 10 years. So long term planning in this country is very poor. And if all this mandate that we have is going to be gone in three or four years time, we've got to do after that. We got to work and do what we did in the 70s and build out in Tallaght, Clondalkin, Blanchardstown. No. We no longer have land out there. Do we have some kind of a regional strategy?
What would you like to see happen? Because you can see the tensions in that you sit within a national policy and within a national program. But from Dublin City Council. What is your intent or what would you prefer to see happening in housing? Because some people would say we should have large scale projects when an environment where the city is changing rapidly. I mean, your own figures recently and. You talked about yourself, talked about the scale of the migrant population, which in a sense emergency accommodation happening all the time. The 17 and a half thousand people on your waiting list. Is there a sense when you say change has to happen? That from Dublin City Council's point of view, there's a need to really radically rethink how we think about housing in this city over the future, period. And that's more than five years. We're at least thinking of between now and 2040, a kind of city. Do we want to see happen?
Well, we do need to think radically. But again, as I said, it's how to do that when there's such panic going on on a day to day basis. And we need to get some supply done as quickly as possible. We can't do the type of things that we would like to do. We need more social housing. We've nothing against building social housing. People think we have we haven't and the government, are not against building social housing. The reality is we have only a small amount of land left in the city and that's all in small plots throughout the city. So the idea that we could build thousands of houses somewhere, we just can't. It's not possible. And social housing has a bad image and some of the large social housing schemes that we have and became failures. Ballymun did and others ended up being demolished. And it wasn't all to do a single tenure it was actual the sheer size ballymun had two thousand eight hundred and sixteen apartments. Other areas of the city had really high numbers, but no real services. So there's very much kind of in regard to how the crisis is at the moment. That will be a big mistake to build major huge housing estates. However, when we're building anything in the city at the moment, even if it's 10 we're being accused of, we're making the same mistakes. Why don't we have a mix - people are against social housing regardless of the numbers - totally against it -huge opposition and sometimes the opposition can actually be quite toxic. But what we need is more and more of a mix. There has to be more creative ways of doing it like we have industrial land in the city. It can be rezoned in time to get a mix. But the idea that you go out and build a thousand or 2000 houses and apartments in the same place, it just doesn't work. But we've nothing against the idea. Maybe building 250, a 300. But a lot of people, a lot of various commentators are saying to us, even if we're planning to build 50 or 60 that, you know, there should be a mix. And really, the real reason the truth, if they were prepared to tell the truth is that they just don't want social housing beside them.
And yet in many ways, like no more than my mother was born in the tenements and grew up in Marino. Most people in this city, in Dublin, probably the majority people in city have come through some form of social housing. So in many ways, like when you mentioned Ballymun and I grew up in Whitehall around the corner from Ballymun, I know the Ballymun story very well is that in many ways, Ballymun, as you said yourself, it's a failure of the resources, the facilities, public transport for the people who moved from the city to what then seemed quite far out, no longer that far to any of us. But when we think about that way of provision, I mean, we have huge projects already, as you say, underway like in cherry wood. And you have obviously new schemes and new ways of thinking about housing happening in the city, as you mentioned, like St Michael's with the cost rental project. I mean, from the perspective of all of the blockages that you see there, if you were to and we know there's no magic wand, but if you were able to have a freer hand, what would you like to see happen?
We need to build ... as much as possible. Sometimes those obstacles are difficult to get across. I think for Dublin and you know, we built thousands of houses out in Tallaght, Clondalkin, Blanchardstown back in the 70s when there was no supermarkets out there and no roads and no public transport. Really what you need is a strategy for the region. And I say the region is not just Dublin, it should be Kildare, Meath, Wicklow and that housing will be built in a planned way. With a mixed tenure. And rather than, say, Dublin City Council, we have eighteen thousand families on our waiting list and we get an allocation to build. This made a case for that. Why not join the waiting list for the Dublin region in and give an allocation to Kildare, Meath, South Dublin and do it in a proper way because it's not working the way it is. But it's very difficult to get out and all the time where we're dealing with national strategies, a strategy that suits Roscommon, Sligo and Dublin as well. And that doesn't work. What we really need my view is it is a strong strategy for the Dublin region
A spatial program. And so how can that happen? Because, I mean, that comes up again and again and again. Another neck of the woods I know quite well is Co. Meath and the coastal region -Twenty five percent of the new house builds happening in this period are in that County Meath region. And. Yet. When you look at the evidence of who's buying it, those estates, they're all just commuting in and out of Dublin. So the need for this kind of planning is staring us in the face. But how do we make that happen?
That requires strong political decisions. And with the kind of government situation is there at the moment last couple of years it's actually difficult to take hard controversial decisions like that. But that's what it needs because we we can only do so much and we are committed to doing it, but we're restricted as to what we can do. We can't control outside our own area. But there's a lot of houses being built in those areas they're private houses. But why not have some? And I'm not talking about that. We go back to the mistakes of the past and build huge housing estates way outside or way, way out in the region, but have a mix - like cherry wood thing. You know that you have a mix of cost rental affordable rental and social housing everywhere, because the facilities are there, the transport is there. There are creative ways, maybe in the city that needs good, strong political decisions as well. If you look at NCR, South Circular Road, Mountjoy Square, all these big houses, many of them are lying idle,, many of the half empty they are falling apart. The landlords can't afford to do it. It's very costly. But those areas could cater for thousands and thousands of families living right smack in the middle of the city center where you would need a car. So there are things I doubt that that I think we should happen. We don't have control over those things. There's other lands in the city owned by the state. And people might say, why don't we take those? We can't just take it because they have plans for those. The Land development Agency may actually make some progress on that Industrial Land in the city could be rezoned with some of the Naas Road, Glasnevin does an industrial estate at the far end of the Luas line at cabra that you could build thousands of apartments, but the land is owned privately. If you look at say the Vienna model and things like that in other countries. The reason those things worked is because the state owned the land.
And in some ways that brings us to the model that's being created in the US because we do have the land development agency, housing agency. We have other players within this field.
From your perspective, Dublin City Council as a key part and and in some ways the housing pressure is predominantly in this neck of the woods. How do you see this moving forward and where are those ways in which we can see coordinated planning with the use of land? The shifting of land from one use to the other, whether you're saying brown sites and old industrial estates depots. I mean, I was looking at the figures for the city council depots and the reimagining for those, you know. And obviously I I think there's there's a way of thinking about the city rather than it just being one of going higher or going out to three neighbouring counties.
I'd very much welcome the concept of the land development agency. when that gets going. Hopefully can do things that we can't do, but we do work with all these agencies. It's very difficult to get even a debate about long term planning. But Long-Term Strategic Issues around the land, because the debate is so controversial and so sensitive and so political and so many commentators out there. But politically, if you have a very tight political situation, which you have at the moment, it's very hard to get anyone to be thinking about five years time or 10 years time. It's short term.
You find it difficult to get the politicians or say the minister or the planner is the actual national bodies to take this long term view?
No, I think you can get it from the national bodies. But I think, you know, for things really happening. You need to get really a political debate. Political decisions made around 5, 10, 15 years around the Dublin region, not nationally, because the issues are totally different. Okay. Some of the urban areas, Limerick Cork and Galway have their issues, but not at the level of Dublin. Dublin needs something different. It's not about spilling out either because I don't think it's the right way, a right way of doing it. But is that going to be the only alternative for us in a couple of years time? We'll continue to build and everything that we have and we're building now. But once that land is gone, we don't have that anymore. We also need ... you might have noticed in recent times councillors are very reluctant to do it to vote in favour of what we're planning to do in O'Devaney Gardens 824 dwellings that could start next year and another thousand or so out in Coolock and they were prepared to turn that down. So like if you had that kind of a political situation it's very difficult for us. That means projects being abandoned and maybe it's been five, seven years before we be back on site again. So that's that's that's that's what we're up against.
And I suppose just to to pause for a moment on O Devaney Gardens, because again, it is such a long history, as you say, the public private and the the loss of that in the recession and this stalemate. So from your perspective, the council and the councillors resistance to re-approve that, do you have an understanding of where that. Has come from that resistance to now go with what was already approved in twenty seventeen for O'Devaney Gardens.
It's hard to figure out where the resistance is coming from. It was approved and overwhelmingly approved before ... a lot of it seems is just political. We're in a very political era at the moment. It's hugely disappointing. And one of the most frustrating things I've come across in my 40 years work in the local authority. Now it's not dead. And still confident that maybe next month we might get it through - we're doing some work quietly behind the scenes on it. But the fact that it came so close to being abandoned is quite shocking.
And again, it just in terms of listening to what people were saying and working to see it from both points of view, and I can I can see how frustrating it would be for yourselves. But I suppose some of the councillors, when you were listening to them, that they're now in a position where, say, the idea that only 30 percent is social housing became more problematic in the area. And then we've been having this very real, perhaps visceral discussion about what affordable means - that in some ways it's almost come from the unpacking about what we do with public land, because in many ways, while it may seem completely frustrating and unjustified in the policy to people like yourselves, it almost has come from this idea. Like, should a private developer benefit from what is public land?
Like at the end of the day, people have to realize that we don't build houses. It's a developer that builds it. So if we were doing it directly ourselves, we'd have to go and get a developer and the developer would make a huge profit. Like we have a contract now to build apartments on Dominic St. and Donore avenue and they're costing about 360,000 each on land we own. So we don't know what profit that contractor makes, it's none of our business. Every contract makes a profit. So the reality is a developer in O'Devaney Gardens is not making a mad profit at all out of it, he has to make a profit. And it's really quality accommodation like our our experts will tell us that if we were building what BARTRA are building it would cost us 120,000 per unit, more than what we're doing now - so we're getting real quality out of it. But a part of it is I suppose that's what has happened the last 10 years. Developers are bad people. They're the cause of the recession - they still weren't really. We're never going to solve the housing crisis until we get private developers building again. It's hard to know what if you really put it down to it. People talk about the affordability, but affordability is always linked to cost. And so the idea that you get real quality apartments in the Dublin 7 area within walking distance of Phoenix Park, Heuston Station and the city centre. But there's some 320000. I just can't figure out like you won't get that anywhere else. And you know, the idea that you know, that it can be made affordable for people, everybody to buy even more, even if they were being built for 200000 there'd be that people there couldn't afford to buy them and then more social housing like out of this deal, we're getting 192 social units. We're getting over 200, in fact, and then we're building another 38 down the road. So it means there's more social units in that area than there were when O'Devaney Gardens were standing. There'll be a lot of commentators, particularly people, maybe they live in some of the areas around that are really angry at the idea of another 200 social units going in. So it's gonna be the opposition coming from that side of it. And we think it... It would be on sustainable to build 854 social units in one location. So sometimes it's actually difficult to work out where the opposition is coming from. And a lot of it is orchestrated for political reasons, but it was a procurement process. It's land owned by the state. It's the state going off with a mandate being given by local councillors going through the public recruitment process to get this development done for the benefit of the citizens of Dublin and to get a mix of private, affordable and social. And we get a bit of a profit out of it as well, we get 7 million that can be invested into the area afterwards. We think it's a really good deal. I know it's hard to figure out whether it was a lack of understanding, but certainly the idea that the state is giving away or selling private land, that's something we've been very much up against. It has taken an awful long time to develop it to ourselves.
Do you think from city council's perspective, then, that you were not perhaps explaining that very well? Because in some ways, you know, you've had a scenario where all of the headlines have been about some city council giving away public land. BARTRA has already been in the news a lot recently with not good headlines because of co living. So there was a negative around that title in the story. So has part of it been with councillors. I suppose what was surprising about this, that some of the people who've been involved in the opposition are not new councillors. They actually were existing on the previous council
And they voted in favour of the model of voted in favour of the scheme. Back in January 2018. Absolutely. Yeah, we lost the PR battle. Despite us all our best efforts and despite us saying that we weren't selling it and despite us saying that we weren't gifting it. we weren't giving it away but I think we're in the middle of a very political situation. And I don't think people wanted to hear what we were trying to say. And it always kind of call me before us to communicate things better. But we certainly didn't win this one.
I guess from the outside and in listening to this and following it, it's that. Does that suggest that, Dublin city council and housing, particularly in Dublin City Council and the executive, that you need to be a more vocal voice on housing strategy and policy. People are anxious. They know that we're in a situation where this this has been ongoing. In a sense. We've been having this conversation for some years. So I suppose what I'm wondering here is like, given what you're talking about in O' Devaney Gardens and in a sense maybe the slowness of progress in some other areas like St Michael's, perhaps it would seem to me like isn't there a need for D.C.C to actually be far more vocal in a strategy and a vision for the city, which actually encapsulates the things you're talking about and sells it?
I would argue that we do but It just doesn't work. And while everybody wants to see more social housing in the city, they suddenly don't want to see it in their own backyard. And we're developing 200 units. And social units in odevaney gardens that would take families out of hotels, take families after emergency accommodation. So all those people on the waiting lists are losing out. We're building 56 houses there at the moment that could be ready in May. So they're going to have an empty derelict office site to look out for and move in. We're creating 165 apartments for people to buy at less than 320000 in the Dublin seven area. It was quite a shock that, you know, in the current crisis that the council would actually contemplate something like that down.
If you look at this discussion that we've been having over the past year about the Vienna model and in a sense you launched the exhibition that that that was here for the month of April. I wonder when you think about what happened with O'Devaney, to be slightly devil's advocate on this. That partly what's happening is also the unpacking of some of the very aspirational and inspiring ideas of the Vienna model. Housing is a human right. The idea that, you know and you've talked about it yourself, that housing within the city should we should have a change in the income brackets so that you should be able to to have a breakdown of the ways in which we talk about social housing and affordable housing, which is where Vienna is.
So that perhaps it's also that you've actually been very good at showing and exhibiting the Vienna model and his vision for his city. And in many ways, perhaps another way of looking at what's happened in o devaney Gardens is also people want more. They want to see more ambition around the split between public land providing and also the ways in which we even think about social housing. Like partly what I was also hearing was sort of saying that we also really need to challenge this idea that social housing is not something that's not part of the pride of our city. You know, whether it's Marino, Drumcondra, Cabra or Whitehall as I grew up in that, you know, part of this thing is actually the Vienna model is is this really, as you talked about it yourself in April. It's a highly inspiring model and may be change. You're also seeing in this environment is people now are really looking at the idea of these rights that that exist around housing.
I don't think it was really part of that and it's difficult for me to get into it. But, you know, I think in some ways maybe the Vienna model was used as a ruse to try and stop it, to try and slow it down like the reality is we need supply, we need more houses, we need them built and these were going to be built quickly. And the idea does 800 houses so badly need in this city were going to be rejected. Plus, on the north side as well as, you know, sometimes you nearly put up your hands and say 'what more'. What more do we need to do in addition to thew Vienna model like the vienna are at it For a hundred years. So the state had the land , it's a totally different political system it's a a socialist system out there. in this country. For whatever reason, we don't get into the business of buying land. We could have bought a huge amount of and his city very cheaply 10 15 years ago during the recession. Some of the sites that could be bought for 12 million are noew selling for a hundred million, we don't seem to do that in this country, that century they're decades at it out there. However, what i would say is the concept of a secure, private, rented sector in this country so badly needed, it is the way to go. And we're totally behind it. But it's not going to happen overnight. It's going to take years and years to get this. And the first steps towards it, towards it is the cost went up.
And let's just talk about Cost Rental for a moment, because in a sense, partly what I want to get at here says is how the housing strategy as we move forward from 2019 will bring us into a different way of thinking about housing. So cost rental and I think I was at the residential meetings this time last year in Richmond Barracks and in St. Michael's house so cost rental is part of those building blocks for Dublin city council in changing the way we think about housing or providing it here. I suppose from your perspective. Can you give me an idea about why you think cost rental is such a vital building block?
Because we have to get a vibrant, secure private rented sector in this country. What we have is private housing and social and we have a really dysfunctional private rented sector. Like 102 new families were present, presented and accepted as homeless in September. Forty five percent of those came from the private sector. So we need.
They've been evicted by landlords
The whole thing has just fallen apart and we need options for people. Our young people are getting tired of settling down whatever they get. They can rent property. What security? Look, if they they always get criticism, the so-called cuckoo funds and so on. These investment companies like the stuff they're doing is real quality is really well built. It's higher quality than anything else you get . It's well managed. Have concierge all this kind of stuff. They have security of tenure, you don't get evicted from those places unless you don't pay your rent. And there's an element of security over a period years on the level of rent increases, the only trouble is that two and half thousand euro per month to rent, it's far too expensive. So we're trying to do our vision is that we could do that and do it at a much cheaper level, that we could end up doing that well-managed. quality accommodation at about a thousand euro twelve hundred euro per month. that would really make a big difference, we get more and more. That's what we're trying to do.
So that's what I think Michael's house is about
now. Some people would argue maybe 18000 families why should we be doing anything about cost rental for why don't we use all our land for social housing? But the reality is we have land in certain parts of the city where there's a high concentration andela. Those are those are the areas like Ballymun, Cherry Orchard and around Coolock where we aim to develop cost rental on our own land and we've got to get affordability in the city is that all sides can do it. No price on land and free land where we get a grant from government towards infrastructure. And that's what we're trying to do in some way.In st michael's estate. It shows that sometimes people seem to think that we can just go out and do cost rental and do private rent. The big issue in this country is the cost of building. So if you're starting off like dominic street, you know,no land costs and it's still costing us 350000 per unit. It's very hard for a period of time to do any reasonably priced cost rental on that. But that's our aim. And we to keep at it and we've got to keep pushing. And despite the opposition which is fierce and toxic and vicious sometimes becase regardless of what use what people say
Fierce, toxic
and vicious at times
one of the things that strikes me from outside with cost rental and having gone through all the positives on it. And also that the challenge within this matrix is that you have a government and a taoiseach who's actually said they remain firmly implanted in home ownership as being the stable model for housing in Ireland. And in some ways, what the council is doing and looking at in a future plan and cost rental is saying, no, that has to change. I mean, is that the core tension that exists between a country built and almost idealising homeownership as stability and the only way to have secure tenure, which really doesn't count because most times were mortgage debt held. And as we saw in in the recession, there was no security for the people who had gone out on a limb on it. So but is there a tension is that the tension in cost rental, that there is still a very strong political affinity to-
I think there's very strong support for the development of cost rental. I was disappointed that we didn't don't have a scheme. But on the other hand, the government are saying to us, you know, when you go off and develop it develop a pilot in st michael's estate and sometimes that's good because sometimes it's bad for the locals how to that these things rather than coming down from on high. There's always going to be really strong pressure on politicians in relation to affordable housing and mortgages. And that's where that's where the votes come from. So I think the culture in this country is for people to want to buy. Part of it is that there's no alternative, but we suddenly see the vision going forward is around cost renter. It is the way to go. So it's a fairly radical shift. We've got a really secure private sector is going to make a big difference.
<em>But for cost rental to work, it needs scale, not more slow pilots. I would suggest to scale it. As you say, that's the bit that probably-</em>
-Well we're doing 300, we've a site in Ballymun where we're trying and you'll see evidence of it soon for 300 units - the sites we're talking about are relatively small. So what do we do, we need to get the private sector involved because they're the only ones that really can do it at scale. And if they're concerned about profit and all that, then cost rental is probably not viable.
Except except student accommodation was incentivised and within a very short period of time. In fact, less than a year we saw a massive shift into the provision of student accommodation and some would argue that in parts of the city were oversupplied.
like in Dublin 8 on student accommodation, so the market would suggest that if you incentivise it into different areas, whether it's hotels or student accommodation, the market moves.
Absolutely. The evidence of that is in thousand eighteen. We got 100 units from part five in the city, which means there was only a thousand units private built in the city and we had 200 this year. Maybe 300 next year means the private sector are building the buildings for student habitation because there's an incentive there and building hotels, there's an incentive there. And the only, only apartments that's really coming out of it is to build to rent and that's catering for for people and they need to be cared for as well as marketing for the bulk of people can't afford. And I agree, some kind of incentivisation. But again, you know, since the recession that's become a dirty word, private developers have become a dirty word, Banks have become a dirty word.
Except it's not a dirty word when we get to REITs or to those kind of developments. So, you know, in some ways, like what we've we've public policy and administration who actually is very pro,
but we'll never solve the housing crisis in the state on its own. can't solve the housing crisis - it'll be the private sector that'll solve it in time. And if they're not interested, if not incentivised, it it's not viable for them, there's an awful lot of land in the state is owned by private developers so the scope is there. So I agree some kind of incentive to private developers will make a big difference yes.
One of the initiatives that did happen this year based on national policy was relating to the regulations on short term letting. Now, obviously, in many ways, you know, I can see from Dublin City Council's point of view, this was done from outside your realm and inflicted upon you in terms of, you know, how do you implement this? But where we are in a scenario that at the end of the year, those regulations are in place since July. And I think I saw the other day that literally a handful of people have actually made a change in a city where actually AirBnB units in the city is growing rather than decreasing. What's your take on that? Because that's a huge shift and replacement of what was private rental stock into holiday flats.
I'm not sure whether there's real evidence of that. It's a bit like the student accommodation, like for years and years were crying out for more student accommodation in the city. Now we have thousands of it people giving out about that there's too much of it. And it was said that they would make a difference to the private rented sector after that. Rather than the students going into private sector but that doesn't seem to have made a difference either. And this issue that, you know, that private apartment be for homeless people? If it wasn't for AirBnB, I don't think that would happen. But there's no doubt there's landlords getting out of finding habitation for people and find accommodation for people in need to get out the easy route of Airbnb absolutely landlords of the call for the easiest piece to do it. And the regulation takes a bit of time, but whether it makes a difference to the housing. Seen like for people saying, I just don't know, that remains to be seen.
What would you say? I mean, obviously we can see all the challenges that are there, but in going into 2020, that lovely rounded number. What's the the ways in which you can show and tell people about how housing is changing at the direction and the strategy and the policy of city council? What's the good news?
I think the good news is the pipeline that we clearly state and it's been very, very slow. And the process can be horrendously slow procurement all the rules are whatever we have just have to go through those, the level activity at the moment with thirteen hundred being built in this city and so on. It's the highest level activity since 1995, 1996. It's not coming fast enough, but it's in the pipeline. I will make a difference. But until such time as the private sector do more and build on the land that they own, and start building for people who want to buy and for people want to rent. We're not going to solve this. This issue is going to continue for another few years.
The one I haven't talked about is the housing observatory. From the perspective of policy and strategy, can you give us a take on how you see the role and significance of the dublin housing observatory.
I think it's very important insofar as that we are caught up day and day. I was dealing with trying to get places, build, and manage everything we're trying to do. We get to the whole process and all that. And we do need to get evidence. We do need to have strategy, we do need to have research. When where I was dealing with communities trying to get houses built, they always told back to us that there's too much sort housing area and we don't always. The information there. So what a big organisation. How is a huge issue for us? Biggest issue would be for the country is the issue in Dublin. We need to have research. We need to have strategy and need to have vision, underhanded stuff in the house ourselves. What really happens to do that? And that was Brendan Kenny, the Dublin City Council manager responsible for housing and community services in the city. And as you can hear there, a real sense of frustration at the blockages that the local authority feels in meeting its mission and housing.
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