Sir, – Among the many massive housing challenges facing those who need or wish to live in Dublin, a particularly serious problem that has not been the focus of attention is the severe lack of family-sized homes.
New family-sized apartments to rent, or indeed to buy, at affordable prices have become a scarce commodity. In addition, due to scarcity, the prices of second-hand homes in suburban estates to rent or buy have gone well beyond affordability and are reaching levels not seen even at the height of the boom. This situation is exacerbated by large investment funds buying up individual second-hand houses for rental. Those wanting a family home in Dublin at an affordable price are being forced to move to the commuter belt or provincial towns. This is the very antithesis of what sustainable housing policy is meant to achieve.
Dublin, and especially Dún Laoghaire Rathdown, is becoming an inhospitable place for families who would like to settle there. In Dún Laoghaire Rathdown, up to June 2022, a total of 4,424 build-to-rent dwellings have been granted planning permission, of which 118 are three-bedroom units! The clear need for one- and two-bedroom homes should not be addressed at the expense of family sized homes if we aspire to vibrant, mixed neighbourhoods catering to the diversity of communities.
Several leading architects and developers are advocating a move toward low- to mid-rise high-density own-door urban homes, affordable and attractive to mixed communities of families, single people and older people downsizing, and a move away from the rigid Government insistence on unsustainable and unaffordable high-rise apartment blocks of mainly one- and two-bed units.
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But let us be wary of suggestions that, in such an approach, affordability depends on big reductions in garden sizes, separation distances and privacy. The garden, and especially the private back garden, is as important a facet of home life as the number of bedrooms and, particularly with the experience of the pandemic, one of the key reasons why so many people opt for a house rather than an apartment.
Of course there are no more outdoor toilets or coal sheds, but for today’s residents, the back garden is the private place where they can sit on warm summer days or have friends over for a barbecue. The back garden can house the washing line and the vegetable patch, for children the paddling pool and the swing, and most especially for parents, the safe place where under-fives can play under watchful parental eyes without heading out to a park or communal playground. Besides, we have too much experience now of the way reduced standards so often fail to translate to lower prices. The market is the market.
The needs and choices of people, including the needs of parents and children, must be a key influencer of policy on this and other housing design matters.
Government Ministers need to find good ways of connecting with the people and their local representatives before any new housing design guidelines or policies are handed down to our planning authorities.
Public engagement will pay off politically in the end. – Yours, etc,
Cllr ANNE COLGAN,
(Independent),
Ballinteer,
Dublin 16.