Private Corporations Planning Domination Of DLR
Two statistics contained in recent publications from Dún Laoghaire Rathdown County Council highlight how private developers and private corporations are set to dominate housing in the area for years to come.
The first statistic comes from the DLR draft development plan for 2022 to 2028. It shows that in September of last year there were 1,800 homes under construction and almost 10,000 more homes with full planning permission ready to commence construction.
Excerpt from page 16 of the DLR draft development plan 2022 - 2028.
Private developers and corporations control 11,500 of these 11,800 homes, the vast majority of which are apartments as opposed to traditional houses.
At this point it’s not possible to say how many of these 11,500 homes will end up being owned by private corporations, but we do know that virtually every new apartment built in DLR in recent years has been snapped up by the vultures.
In addition to the 11,500 homes that have already been granted planning, there are also several other large Build-To-Rent developments that have yet to reach the formal planning process.
These include a 500+ apartment development on the old Dundrum Shopping Centre site and a 700+ apartment development beside Gort Muire site in Ballinteer.
The second statistic comes from the DLR Social Housing Progress Report for the end of 2019. It shows that DLR had only one active building site at the end of last year, a 21 home development in Ballinteer. More disturbingly, the local authority had secured planning permission for just 134 additional homes.
This means that the wealthiest local authority in the country, which has almost 4,500 applicants on its social housing waiting list, plans to directly build just 155 homes between now and the middle of 2022 at the very earliest.
Speaking in relation to the housing situation in the DLR area, Brian Leeson said, “These figures are shocking but not that surprising. Éirígí has been actively campaigning on the housing issue since 2016 in the Rathdown area.
Over that time we have tracked the rapid corporate takeover of housing in the area. Vultures of all descriptions have already amassed about 3,000 homes in the Rathdown part of DLR alone. And they have plans for thousands more at various stages of planning and construction.
Rents in the area are now the highest in Ireland - largely down to the very aggressive pricing strategies of the vultures. The handful of companies that now control a huge portion of the rental sector are acting as a de facto cartel to keep rental prices as high as they possibly can.
Brian Leeson and other Éirígí activists have been leading the fight for housing justice in Rathdown since 2016.
The response of DLR council to the rapidly changing housing situation has been appalling. They ignored the warnings that people like me have been making since 2016 and failed to make the necessary plans to directly built the thousands of public homes that are now needed.
Now we are looking at a situation where our local authority are going to build just one home for every seventy-four homes that the private sector build. There is no possibility of ending the housing crisis when the state is building just 1.3% of new housing.
The failure by DLR to directly build housing has left them heavily reliant on the private sector to deliver social housing through Part V housing, HAP and the long-term leasing of housing from private corporations. This works out far more expensive for the taxpayer in the long-term.
Over the next few months we’ll be stepping up the pressure on DLR and whatever new government emerges to use local publicly-owned lands for developments that will be 100% Universal Public Housing. I encourage anyone from the area that wants to join the fight for housing justice to get in touch with me.”