Housing Crisis in Dublin - Government Parties' PPP Strategy Flops

The fascination with prices in the private housing market has obscured a growing crisis of social and affordable housing supply in Dublin.

This week Dublin City Council has suspended its Affordable Housing scheme. At the same time, its plans for Social Housing are in collapse, with a public private partnership arrangement with Bernard MacNamara, Developer, for 900 million euro worth of housing development having fallen apart (McNamara has withdrawn from the scheme). Tenants have already been moved out and sites cleared.

Affordable housing relies on Council’s acquiring a portion of private development and selling it on at a subsidised price for private ownership. The basis of the PPP schemes, reported in Indymedia in 2007, is that older public housing areas would be demolished and redeveloped with much higher densities, some of the flats being sold privately and others providing rented social housing.

The slump in housing construction means that both of those schemes are non-viable.

Dublin City Council’s has over 8,000 families on the waiting list for Affordable Housing and there are 6,000 households on the waiting list for Social Housing. 10% of their housing stock is empty, including a number of brand new affordable units acquired in private developments. There are over 1, 300 homeless families in Dublin waiting for housing and some families have been on the waiting list for 8 or 9 years.

In the past two years less than 250 affordable houses a year have been let by Dublin City Council. About 10% of their housing stock is vacant. including

John Gormley actively promoted the relationship with McNamara as a way of providing social and low cost housing.

http://www.johngormley.com/wp/2007/01/18/a-home-of-your-own-public-meeting-on-housing/

As with the bio fuel fiasco, the Greens have shown themselves to be willing promoters of private market schemes that fail to deliver or that are actively damaging to people and to the environment.

MCNamara wins Inchicore and Devaney flats redevelopment.

Post LINK

its hardly only the greens fault that totally undermines your argument again.

moreinfo
http://www.independent.ie/business/personal-finance/discount-homes-1361810.html

article from examiner here to avoid tch's shitty links
http://www.finfacts.ie/irishfinancenews/article_101345.shtml

Quote :

As with the bio fuel fiasco, the Greens have shown themselves to be willing promoters of private market schemes that fail to deliver or that are actively damaging to people and to the environment.

athough i do agree with this
that's why i call em pdgreens

I have 2 questions about this thread:

1.
How is it the Green Party's fault that a private developer has withdrawn from a PPP scheme?

2.
Is MN going down the road of being a platform for posters to attack political parties and politicians? I thought it was about general political discussion?

cactus threw some little grenade in there then headed away to bed .. you'll have to take up point 1 with her tomorrow seinfeld but to half answer you I was going to post something earlier on this along the lines of Dublin's housing problems are going back years and have feck all to do with the GP how can it? In my opinion Dublin is a problem of large-scale planning, countrywide spatial strategy scale as well as locally in the city. I wonder how developers like Sean Dunne can be turned down with all the demand for housing ... and now talks of credit crunch and cashflow drying up .. Dublin seems to need affordable rental property as well as affordable housing.. jaysus it's a mess up there I haven't a clue what will help maybe a bit of a slump and people selling their investment properties cheaply or something - the Green Party at this stage certainly cannot be blamed for something which in my mind should have been dealt with ten years ago at least.

On point 2 - thanks for reminding us of our principles of aspiring towards non-biased non-partisan non-personal critical analysis of infrastructure and its interface with politics. If cactus has something specific to say about Mr. Gormley then I'm sure she'll expand on that when she wakes up.

http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/breaking/2008/0502/breaking41.htm

Local authorities were responsible for the completion of 3,539 units

3,539 units whoopde feicing do

sean dunne gets turned down cos he wants highrise outside of the designated areas of the development plan, quite simple

you mean "development plan".

What development plan.

the docks and heusten gate and...

lostexpectation wrote:

its hardly only the greens fault that totally undermines your argument again.

Seinfeld said

Quote :

I have 2 questions about this thread:

1.
How is it the Green Party's fault that a private developer has withdrawn from a PPP scheme?

2.
Is MN going down the road of being a platform for posters to attack political parties and politicians? I thought it was about general political discussion?

This thread title is saying that there is a housing crisis in Dublin because a strategy taken on and promoted by the Greens has failed. The Greens are a new entity in Government and there is a Green Minister for the Environment who is responsible for housing. IMHO it is important to evaluate what they are doing in terms of political and social strategy. Plus there are thousands of people in Dublin who now left with nowhere to live, with housing estates having been run down and demolished to make way for private profit schemes. It was an avoidable disaster.

The Public Private Partnership strategy originated with FF and the PDs in 2003, but the Greens have taken it on and promoted it though its most disastrous recent phase. The Green Party specifically promoted McNamara by putting him up as guest speaker in a Green Party public meeting in January 2007 before he was awarded the contract to redevelop St Michael’s Inchicore. The meeting was called by John Gormley, Ciaran Cuffe and Eamon Ryan and was billed as discussing “solutions on how to tackle the housing crisis we face”.

http://www.johngormley.com/wp/2007/01/18/a-home-of-your-own-public-meeting-on-housing/

In March 2007 McNamara won the contract for development of St Michaels Inchicore.

http://archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2007/03/04/story21412.asp#

"MCNamara wins Inchicore and Devaney flats redevelopment."

All of the inner city estates had been stripped out of working people by the £5,000 grants in the 1980s and were in a bad way with unemployment and heroin. The PPP policy was introduced by Martin Cullen in 2003. At that time Dublin City Council’s architects were working on some top class renewal projects that won international prizes. The Fatima Mansions project went ahead successfully as a PPP with a high level of involvement by the residents and a real community development input.

Then in the last two years with the inflation of land values in Dublin combined with a “sustainability” agenda based on high density inner city regeneration feeding off each other all that was thrown out. Mega profits were envisaged by private developers getting their hands on inner city land by bumping up density of development sky high.

The St Michael’s residents worked for 3 years with the Council hoping for a development like Fatima. They had a scheme ready and then it was pulled by the Department and the Council and replaced with one far higher density and mainly private. The estate was run down, boarded up and I think is now demolished. Indymedia has reported this over the years and you can see what the residents have experienced.

http://www.indymedia.ie/article/66997

The running of Affordable Housing by DCC is also a disaster. There are reports on Property Pin of a lot of new units owned by DCC not occupied.

Affordable Units have been overvalued and the few people being offered them are finding they could not get a mortgage to match these valuations.

Dublin City Council has a 10% vacancy rate – way above accepted housing management norms.

I am assuming the main responsibility of FF for this and should maybe have stated that, but the fact that this government promotes private profit as its top priority I would have thought didn't need to be said. My observation is that the Greens have been right in there with FF and that voters who voted Green could not have known that this would happen.

I’m not saying that the Greens caused the collapse in the housing market, although they certainly should have been able to anticipate by 2007 that it was highly likely to occur. I had hopes for the Greens when they went into Government and have voted Green on occasions. I now agree with lostexpectation’s description of them as Green-PDs. They consistently have promoted privatised solutions and use their meetings as platforms for private business people to an extent I think even FF would not do.

That's a rather bizarre attempt to pin Dublin City Council's housing strategy on the Greens, just because they had a housing developer speak at a public meeting on housing. According to the web site there were a bunch of other speakers on the bill at that meeting - does this mean that the Green Party was actively promoting all of their approaches to the housing issue?

If so then the party was pursuing a very inconsistent housing policy. Of course I suppose you could just read the party's housing policy rather than trying to extrapolate it from the list of speakers at a single public meeting.

joemomma wrote:

That's a rather bizarre attempt to pin Dublin City Council's housing strategy on the Greens, just because they had a housing developer speak at a public meeting on housing. According to the web site there were a bunch of other speakers on the bill at that meeting - does this mean that the Green Party was actively promoting all of their approaches to the housing issue?

If so then the party was pursuing a very inconsistent housing policy. Of course I suppose you could just read the party's housing policy rather than trying to extrapolate it from the list of speakers at a single public meeting.

When a party has been in government for two years it starts to become more relevant to look at what the party does rather than what is says in policy documents. I have looked at the housing policy on the Green Party site - it was a little hard to follow due to layout difficulties, but it did not seem to promote PPSs. So it is hard to see why McNamara, who was one bidder for contracts presumed at the time to be highly lucrative, was asked to speak on that platform (Jim Power, economist for a building society, being another). The Green Party entered government and John Gormley became Minister for the Environment a few months later. The original impetus for PPSs came from the then Minister for the Environment, Martin Cullen. If John Gormley can be shown to have made any critique of the PPS strategy that has crashed and burned after hundreds of flats were demolished, at that or other meetings, and has tried to turn that policy around, then I will of course retract and apologise.

I am not wanting to make political points here, but to highlight how reliance on the private sector, whose only motive can be to make a profit, for social housing, has failed, and that the Green Party so far as I am aware have implemented this policy in government. If the Greens wanted a balanced debate on Dublin City housing and McNamara was to be a speaker, why didn't they ask a resident from St Michaels or Devaney flats to speak? I think they would have rushed at the chance. IMHO there is a crisis in housing provision in Dublin and as the Minister for the Environment John Gormley should act with the utmost urgency to overturn the now irrelevant PPS policy and get people housed.

cactus flower wrote:

When a party has been in government for two years it starts to become more relevant to look at what the party does rather than what is says in policy documents.

Well, it hasn't even been a year yet, but in any case what you're talking about is our policy pre-Government

Quote :

So it is hard to see why McNamara, who was one bidder for contracts presumed at the time to be highly lucrative, was asked to speak on that platform (Jim Power, economist for a building society, being another).

I don't know - because he builds houses? The panel of speakers listed on the link you provided also includes PJ Drudy of TCD - a little light Googling shows that he's highly critical of the then Government's housing strategy. There's also a Green Councillor from Brighton who is also described as a "housing journalist". I don't know what his perspective was, but the event was clearly not the "Audience with Bernard McNamara" you make it sound like.

Quote :

The Green Party entered government and John Gormley became Minister for the Environment a few months later. The original impetus for PPSs came from the then Minister for the Environment, Martin Cullen. If John Gormley can be shown to have made any critique of the PPS strategy that has crashed and burned after hundreds of flats were demolished, at that or other meetings, and has tried to turn that policy around, then I will of course retract and apologise.

Well, if you are critical of Gormley's record on housing as Minister then go ahead and criticise. But trying to make out that the Greens in opposition were somehow behind the strategy because of this meeting is just bogus. You say you're not trying to make political points, but in the thread title you've called the strategy pursued while the Greens were in opposition the "Green's Strategy".

i reckon the greens were in favour of this (don't you joemomma) of this policy but still there not to blame for it.


nice baiting of the greens to get em to log on eh cactus flower

lostexpectation wrote:

i reckon the greens were in favour of this (don't you joemomma) of this policy but still there not to blame for it.


nice baiting of the greens to get em to log on eh cactus flower

lostexpectation you are genius

But there are serious questions to ask...

joemomma wrote:

cactus flower wrote:

When a party has been in government for two years it starts to become more relevant to look at what the party does rather than what is says in policy documents.

Well, it hasn't even been a year yet, but in any case what you're talking about is our policy pre-Government

Quote :

So it is hard to see why McNamara, who was one bidder for contracts presumed at the time to be highly lucrative, was asked to speak on that platform (Jim Power, economist for a building society, being another).

I don't know - because he builds houses? The panel of speakers listed on the link you provided also includes PJ Drudy of TCD - a little light Googling shows that he's highly critical of the then Government's housing strategy. There's also a Green Councillor from Brighton who is also described as a "housing journalist". I don't know what his perspective was, but the event was clearly not the "Audience with Bernard McNamara" you make it sound like.

Quote :

The Green Party entered government and John Gormley became Minister for the Environment a few months later. The original impetus for PPSs came from the then Minister for the Environment, Martin Cullen. If John Gormley can be shown to have made any critique of the PPS strategy that has crashed and burned after hundreds of flats were demolished, at that or other meetings, and has tried to turn that policy around, then I will of course retract and apologise.

Well, if you are critical of Gormley's record on housing as Minister then go ahead and criticise. But trying to make out that the Greens in opposition were somehow behind the strategy because of this meeting is just bogus. You say you're not trying to make political points, but in the thread title you've called the strategy pursued while the Greens were in opposition the "Green's Strategy".

The Greens are in government and are in charge of the relevant Department that brought in the PPP system.
Have they or have they not supported this strategy while in office ?
I did not say that they were "behind" the introduction of this strategy but that they appear to have adopted it uncritically:

Quote :

This thread title is saying that there is a housing crisis in Dublin because a strategy taken on and promoted by the Greens has failed. The Greens are a new entity in Government and there is a Green Minister for the Environment who is responsible for housing. IMHO it is important to evaluate what they are doing in terms of political and social strategy. Plus there are thousands of people in Dublin who now left with nowhere to live, with housing estates having been run down and demolished to make way for private profit schemes. It was an avoidable disaster.

The Public Private Partnership strategy originated with FF and the PDs in 2003, but the Greens have taken it on and promoted it though its most disastrous recent phase. The Green Party specifically promoted McNamara by putting him up as guest speaker in a Green Party public meeting in January 2007 before he was awarded the contract to redevelop St Michael’s Inchicore. The meeting was called by John Gormley, Ciaran Cuffe and Eamon Ryan and was billed as discussing “solutions on how to tackle the housing crisis we face”.

Quote :

I am not wanting to make political points here, but to highlight how reliance on the private sector, whose only motive can be to make a profit, for social housing, has failed, and that the Green Party so far as I am aware have implemented this policy in government. If the Greens wanted a balanced debate on Dublin City housing and McNamara was to be a speaker, why didn't they ask a resident from St Michaels or Devaney flats to speak? I think they would have rushed at the chance. IMHO there is a crisis in housing provision in Dublin and as the Minister for the Environment John Gormley should act with the utmost urgency to overturn the now irrelevant PPS policy and get people housed.

Apart from that fact that the Greens have been a year and not two in government (my bad) I don't withdraw any of the above.

The PPP system as operated by DCC over the past three years has clearly and predicably failed to deliver.
There is one obvious step to be taken at the moment and that is for DCC to buy up a good number of units available from the private sector and move the homeless and overcrowded families into them. This would almost certainly be far cheaper and much quicker than any of the viable alternatives.

Construction of the schemes (over dense though they are) with public funding should also be considered as the housing need is there as there is now a housing crisis in Dublin.

One thing to note is that a part of the reason why the PPS failed is that new, improved environmental and space standards for apartments were introduced and that this drove the costs of units up very substantially. These standards are a good thing, but it was naive to think that they could be introduced without any impact on prices and on the market.

when were those news standards brought in, they were on their way before the greens came in weren't they?

The standards were brought in by DCC before national standards changed. Higher standards are a good thing, but cost more: they have made impossible to build "cheap" housing. More money will need to be put into housing.

coming as it does with the dcc proposals to get more revenue it does put dcc in the lurch

DCC must have collected massive amounts of commericial rates and developer contributions in the last five years.

okay so where did they spend it?

I don't live in Dublin - does anyone else know?
Salary costs are through the roof. Domestic rates are needed to develop a proper city. INMO relying on developer contributions drove up house prices and was not sustainable for funding social housing and other public work needed for the City.

For the avoidance of any confusion or doubt, I am changing the title of this thread.

cactus flower wrote:

For the avoidance of any confusion or doubt, I am changing the title of this thread.

You're letting the PDs off the hook altogether then?

cactus flower wrote:

The Greens are in government and are in charge of the relevant Department that brought in the PPP system.
Have they or have they not supported this strategy while in office ?

I have no difficulty with anything you might want to say about the Greens in office. It certainly seems as if they haven't effected any material change in housing policy. On the other hand, do you think that Gormley should have pulled the plug on these PPPs before now? I don't even know if he could legally do that, but these projects were well in train when he came into office.


But the point is that you're trying to pin some of the blame for the existence of the policy in the first place on the Greens which is simply bogus.

Quote :

I did not say that they were "behind" the introduction of this strategy but that they appear to have adopted it uncritically:

Sorry but the whole point of your thread initially was that we had promoted this approach while in opposition. Saying we had failed to reverse it in Government is fair comment, it is not fair comment to suggest that we were promoting this while in opposition because Bernard McNamara spoke at one of our meetings. You haven't quite retracted that either, although you're glossing over it as the thread continues.

Quote :

One thing to note is that a part of the reason why the PPS failed is that new, improved environmental and space standards for apartments were introduced and that this drove the costs of units up very substantially. These standards are a good thing, but it was naive to think that they could be introduced without any impact on prices and on the market.

It was certainly naive to think that they wouldn't be used by developers as an excuse for not proceeding with important projects.