Leeson Condemns Plans For 850 Build To Rent Homes In Ballinteer
Two developers are planning to build 850 apartments on these two sites in Ballinteer. Media reports suggest all of these homes will be sold to private corporations which will rent them to desperate tenants for extortionate rents.
Brian Leeson has condemned plans to build another 850 rental apartment on lands adjoining Gort Muire in Ballinteer. The Éirígí representative for the Rathdown constituency said,
“Last week it was revealed that Lioncor Developments is in pre-planning discussions with An Bord Pleanála about building up to 730 apartments on an eight acre site to the rear of Gort Muire in Ballinteer (Site 2 on the image above).
Lioncor bought the site for €35m from the Carmelite Order last year. It’s believed that all of the apartments will be sold to a single private corporation which will then rent them out at extortionate rents to desperate tenants.
Thanks to Eoghan Murphy this type of Build-To-Rent housing is now a recognised stand-alone category of housing. The planning regulations that govern BTR developments allow developers to cram the highest possible number of apartments, including tiny ‘studio apartments’, onto a given site.
Before Eoghan Murphy changed the planning regulations there is no way that a developer would even attempt to secure planning for so many apartments on a site of this size.
The proposed 730 Lioncor apartment development is in addition to the 116 apartments that have already been granted planning permission on the old ‘walled garden’ site (Site 1 on the image above) to the front of Gort Muire.
The ‘walled garden’ site beside Gort Muire, which has full planning permission for 116 one-bed and two-bed apartments, has recently been cleared and is now ready for construction to begin.
The planning permission that they were granted last September is for 40 one-bed apartments and 76 two-bed apartments in four five-story blocks. The fact that there won’t be any three-bed apartments indicates that Marlet intends them for the private rental market, as opposed to traditional owner-occupiers.
In the last few months Marlet have cleared the walled garden site, presumably in preparation for construction to start.
Private corporations already own about 3,000 homes in Ballinteer, Dundrum, Windy Arbour, Churchtown, Stillorgan, Sandyford and Leopardstown. And they have plans at various stages of development for about 3,000 more. If all of their plans come to fruition they will own more than 10% of all housing in Rathdown.
Unlike many other political parties, Éirígí sees no place for institutional landlords in the Irish housing sector. We are calling for the repeal of the 2012 Real Estate Investment Trust legislation that was introduced by Michael Noonan. Similarly the Build-To-Rent category of housing with the planning guidelines to be abolished.
All of the properties and sites that are owned by private corporations should be bought up by the state as part of a wider plan to develop a system of universal public housing that would be open to everyone that is need of a home, regardless of their income. UP Housing is the only system that can permanently end the housing scandal.”