In 2017, Dublin City Council planner John O’Hara said that the council planned to simplify its requirements to help property owners tackle vacancy in the upper floors of buildings in the city centre.
O’Hara said that the Living City Initiative – which offers tax breaks to people who convert vacant upper storeys – needed to be reworked, as take-up hadn’t been good.
Property owners could do with a one-stop shop to deal with the many planning complications that can arise during these conversions, said O’Hara, in a presentation.
Whip forward seven years, to yesterday.
And the planning committee in Dublin City Council heard another presentation, this time by researchers from Dublin City University and the Simon Community, which said something similar.
Projects are still expensive and risky, said the researchers, and they called for the various permissions to be streamlined.
Renovating an existing unit above a shop is too expensive to be viable as social housing at scale, said Michelle Connolly, senior policy and research officer with Dublin Simon Community.
“Financially, it worked out two to three times the cost of delivering a new unit,” she said.
While there are many advantages to renovating existing buildings, it wasn’t a feasible approach at any sort of scale for the not-for-profit approved housing bodies (AHBs) that deliver some social homes, said Connolly.
Councillors welcomed the report and wondered what else the council could do to help progress the long-long-standing issue. An existing scheme doesn’t seem to be working, they said.
“I have questions about the Living City Initiative,” said Labour Councillor Declan Meenagh at the meeting. “I don’t think it is delivering.”
Streamlining processes
To bring vacant properties back into use, property owners need simpler, streamlined approvals processes, said Kathleen Stokes, assistant professor of urban geography at DCU, at the council meeting on 16 April.
The researchers spoke to private property owners and AHBs that had completed above-the-shop renovation projects of vacant above the shop units, dubbed VATSUs.
Pumping more public money into grants isn’t necessarily the solution, said Stokes.
“There was a suggestion that we need to review existing supports before expanding further,” she said. Increasing government support schemes could potentially inflate prices and labour costs, she said.
What property owners need is clear guidance on how to navigate issues, she said. “Much attention was placed on the importance of having guidance and knowledge that might not be available or that individual owners might not have.”
There’s a government grant that funds research into the feasibility of renovating farmhouses, and that could be extended into urban areas, said Stokes.
“What we heard again and again, was more often than not renovating and converting a VATSU into residential use is going to require substantial expertise, lots of time and resources and it can be a daunting and deterring process,” said Stokes.
People don’t want to take on the risk if they don’t know what the eventual cost will be, she said. Some respondents recommended setting aside 20 percent of the total budget for unexpected costs, she said.
People who had completed renovations suggested that a specific manual for renovating above-the-shop units be created, she said.
At the moment, they have to navigate “multiple intersecting approvals and different guidance that can arise between planners, conservation architects and fire and disability access certification process”, said Stokes.
Less experienced owners and developers might consider doing these projects if the approvals processes were streamlined, she said.
Council vacant homes officers need to be supported and resourced to efficiently help people who want to do these renovations, said Stokes.
For years
“This is something we have been trying to get a handle on for many, many years,” said Green Party Councillor Donna Cooney.
Dublin City Council started trying to renovate above the shop units in Capel Street in the 1990s, said Cooney.
But, she said, the cost of doing up the homes has to be balanced against the many benefits of having people living in urban centres – fewer car journeys, renovated towns, safer streets and reduced embodied carbon.
Meenagh, the Labour councillor, suggested that the Housing Agency fund staff dedicated to over-the-shop vacancy. He also suggested an awards scheme to promote these types of renovations.
The Living City Initiative, a taxback scheme launched in 2015 to encourage owners to renovate these properties, doesn’t seem to be working, he said.
Since 2015, 114 homes have been renovated using the scheme, according to a council report issued in October 2023. Of those, 68 were owners occupiers and the other 46 were for rentals.
To avail of that scheme, the person doing the work has to have the money up front.
“It costs a lot, particularly if your building has any sort of structural preservation,” said Labour Councillor Alison Gilliland.
However, the Department of Housing has provided a hefty affordable housing subsidy for private developers, she said.
Gilliland suggested that a subsidy should be available to councils to carry out these renovations and provide affordable homes, that way. “It would seem logical to me that we would apply a similar principle to buildings that have a residential potential in the city centre.”