Councils will get targets for specific types of homes this year. Should they use zoning to meet them?

Close to four years ago, Dublin city councillors voted to rezone a sprawl of lands at Jamestown Business Park in Finglas so that new homes could be built on the site.

In March 2023, Dublin City Council put out a masterplan for the lands, envisioning around 3,500 homes, together with businesses, a primary school, green space and cultural and community space.

But the council has not achieved agreement among the multiple landowners in the business park, so the master plan is still just an aspiration, councillors say.

“It really calls into question the council’s ability to deliver this development,” says People Before Profit Councillor Conor Reddy.

“It’s a very complex thing to put together,” says Social Democrats Councillor Mary Callaghan, including financial agreements between landowners.

Even if they get that agreement, there are still elements of development that are outside of the council’s control under the current planning regime. In particular, it can’t dictate how much affordable housing gets built.

In debates about national housing targets and how much land is needed for housing, and how many tens of thousands of homes are needed in the coming years, exactly what breakdown of types of homes is to be targeted is often overlooked.

In January, a spokesperson for the Department of Housing said that while national high-level housing targets had been agreed, tenure-specific targets hadn’t yet been considered by government.

“These will fall to the incoming government to consider and will include tenure splits,” they said.

On 17 April, the spokesperson said that work on the translation of high-level targets “into local authority, tenure specific targets for social, affordable, and private purchase and rental homes is ongoing”.

“This work will be completed in the coming months in the context of the National Development Plan,” they said.

If those targets are agreed and published, a key question will be how to shape development to meet them.

A revamped masterplan process – one with teeth, as is the case in the Netherlands  – could be the way to get that much-needed housing mix delivered, says Philip Lawton, assistant professor of geography at Trinity College Dublin.

Also, “zoning of lands can be used to create a diverse housing option by promoting mixed-use developments and requiring a variety of unit types and tenures”, says Lisa Rocca, a representative of the Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland (SCSI).

What kinds of homes?

In early 2021, Sinn Féin councillors said that the mix of housing on the Jamestown land in Finglas should be stipulated in the masterplan.

It should be one-third private, one-third social and one-third affordable, their submissions said.

A council report said the housing need demand assessment, done to inform the masterplan, would recommend the tenure mix required. But “the council cannot legally enforce this requirement”, says the report.

And, the city development plan says the masterplan should include a local housing need demand assessment which identifies what is needed in the area in terms of the mix, affordability, social and affordable housing, and housing for vulnerable groups.

Dublin City Council just pointed to a citywide housing needs assessment on Thursday, in response to a query asking for the assessment of tenure needed for the Jamestown masterplan.

The citywide assessment says that, in addition to the need indicated by the existing social housing list, the estimated need of new households formed between 2023 and 2028 would be for social and affordable housing (67 percent), private rental (15 percent), and buyers (18 percent).

A spokesperson for the Department of Housing wasn’t able to say exactly what the tenure mix is that central government is shooting for though.

“The Government’s objective is to increase the supply and quantum of housing across all tenures, be that social, affordable, private purchase or private rental housing,” they said.

“Significantly increased supply of all tenures is needed, including private rental stock, to redress the current imbalance between demand and supply,” they said.

Firmer masterplans?

For a council to deliver social and affordable housing at the scale required, it needs to be able to enforce its masterplans, says Reddy, the People Before Profit councillor.

Philip Lawton, assistant professor of geography at Trinity College Dublin, says that it is better to have mixed-tenure developments rather than designating whole specific sites for affordable homes.

In the Netherlands, the local authority prescribes a mix of different types of homes permitted in a new development, he says.

One apartment block could be designated for 30 percent homeowners, 30 percent social and 30 percent controlled rental, he says.

“In the Irish system, this stuff is really hard. We just don’t have that type of control at the municipal level,” he says.

When the council owns the land it has more control. Dublin City Council decided the mix of homes it wants on land it owns in Ballymun as well as on the former St Michael’s Estate lands in Inchicore.

However, when the council does a master plan on private land, it cannot stipulate the tenure beyond the legal minimum, which is currently 20 percent social and affordable housing and was previously set at 10 percent.

But Lawton says that could be changed to give councils more control over tenure on private land too, he says, especially for larger planned developments, like City Edge, a proposed new suburban on the Naas Road. “Mixed tenure is a good aim in new developments,” says Lawton.

Rocca of the SCSI says that zoning could be used to achieve mixed-tenure developments.

In its Revised Affordable Housing Strategy submission last year, the SCSI identified financial and regulatory challenges to delivering new mixed-tenure developments.

There were particular issues around divvying up the costs of shared infrastructure, says Rocca.

“We recommended regulatory adjustments to improve viability and encourage more integrated housing types on zoned lands,” she says.

A new tsar?

One of the Housing Commission’s recommendations for a reset of Irish housing policy was to establish a new organisation to oversee the delivery of homes.

This Housing Delivery Oversight Executive would ensure that plan-led development delivers both the necessary infrastructure and the right mix of homes to meet people’s needs, says the Housing Commission report.

“It is essential that both public and private housing supply be supported and maintained to ensure housing supply meets housing requirements, and to provide a choice of tenure and housing typology,” says the report.

The Housing Commission also called on the government to substantially ramp up the supply of cost-rental housing.

“When delivered at scale, cost-rental housing can place downward pressure on market rents by acting as a cost-competitive alternative to the private rental market,” it says.

“For this tenure to have an impact in Ireland, however, there will need to be a substantial expansion of its supply,” it says.

The government has moved to establish a new office to deal with infrastructural blockages, but the exact terms of what it will and won’t do are not yet ironed out.

It isn’t clear if this entity will push through the changes that would mean masterplans, like the one in Jamestown Road, actually shape what is delivered.

The new “Strategic Housing & Infrastructure Delivery Office” will “help coordinate and accelerate home building by unblocking infrastructure delay”, said a spokesperson for the Department of Housing.

“The Terms of Reference for this Office will be agreed shortly and matters in relation to its functions, including interactions with existing housing delivery agencies and groups, will be finalised thereafter,” they said.