In Cherry Orchard, a vacant council home is being used for a stables

Number 31 Croftwood Drive, at the end of a short pebbledash terrace in Cherry Orchard, has been boarded up for years.

On Monday, there were brown metal shutters over the windows and doors. But also four trailers in the front garden. In the back garden – visible through a gap in the gate – are horse’s stables.

A man drives up, asks why it’s being photographed. He doesn’t own the house, he says, but keeps horses there.

Dublin City Council owns the house, show property records. It has done since August 2018, and paid €138,000 for it.

Council managers know it’s now used as a stables, says People Before Profit Councillor Hazel de Nortúin.

Dublin City Council should provide stables for horse owners, she said, and renovate and re-let all of the many vacant homes in the area. “The amount of families in need of housing is crazy.”

Dublin City Council hasn’t responded to queries sent on Monday afternoon, asking what it has done to try to regain possession of the house or why it isn’t allocated to a family on the housing list.

In November 2023, de Nortúin counted 35 vacant council-owned homes in Cherry Orchard and pushed the council for an explanation.

Many of those homes are still empty today, she says, and some need extensive work. Six houses in Cherry Orchard have been burned out since the start of 2022, she says.

The Department of Housing hasn’t responded to queries sent Friday, asking whether there have been changes to funding that have affected the turnaround times for vacant homes.

The department funds some refurbishment of vacant social homes under its Voids Programme.

But a council can’t claim back under that stream more than €11,000 on average for each of the homes it’s done up, according to Minister for Housing Darragh O’Brien, speaking in the Dáil last November.

That affects an area like Cherry Orchard more than others, says de Nortúin.

Sinn Féin Councillor Daithí Doolan, who also represents the area, said that walking around last weekend, he thought the dereliction and vacancy was worse than ever before.

“On every second road there is an empty house,” he says.

Sliding

“The amount of empty properties in Cherry Orchard is unacceptable,” says Doolan. “It’s shocking.”

He and de Nortúin say they are contacted regularly by people on the housing list, asking why they aren’t allocating specific boarded-up homes.

It’s unfair to those waiting for a home, in overcrowded situations and in homeless accommodation, says Doolan. It’s also very frustrating for neighbours as it makes the area feel less safe, he says.

“It’s the broken window theory,” he says, referring to the idea that fixing small things contributes to an overall feeling of safety, while failing to do so contributes to disorder and encourages crime.

Vacant homes in Cherry Orchard “attract negative behaviour, dumping and illegal activity”, says Doolan.

So, says de Nortúin, the council needs to take action. “There is a tradition of urban horse ownership,” she says, and the council should accommodate that need.

But not in a council house which should be allocated to a family, she says.

A piece of land has been identified for stables in the Cherry Orchard Local Area Plan, says de Nortúin.

Dublin City Council reports do lay out plans for  31 Croftwood Drive.

The council is procuring a design team as it plans to refurbish the home and build another home in the side garden, says a July housing update. The project got planning approval in March 2022.

Shaped by bureaucracy?

De Nortúin, the People Before Profit councillor, says that one of the problems in Cherry Orchard is that some of the houses have been fire-damaged or deliberately vandalised.

It means they cost more than average to refurbish, she says. “There is no money for that because it is too expensive, it doesn’t fit the average spend on voids.”

“[Minister for Housing and Fianna Fáil TD] Darragh O’Brien is standing up saying that money is not a problem, but they won’t fund some of the projects,” she says.

Indeed, the two homes at Croftwood Drive are listed as a “regeneration” project, in another council report, suggesting that renovation of the vacant boarded-up property will be paid for through a different funding stream than the voids programme.

There are other complicated situations too, says De Nortúin. Council staff might struggle to decide what to do when a victim of domestic violence abandons a property, because the tenant might hope to return later, she says.

But a house left empty too long can become a site for illegal dumping and get run-down, says De Nortúin. “We have to react, we have to find solutions to these cases.”

Then, there’s the issue of labour, she says. “One of the reasons that it takes so long to turn it around is that there is only one contractor for the area.”

The council can only contract builders it has approved, she says.

Doolan, the Sinn Féin councillor, says the solution to that problem is for the council to employ its own builders including skilled tradespeople directly.

“Then we can decide where to deploy them,” he says. “Cherry Orchard needs to be targeted as a matter of urgency.”

Even in a boom, builders would want to work for the council because it would be permanent and pensionable employment, says Doolan.

De Nortúin says she can think, off the top of her head, of a council home in Cherry Orchard that has been vacant for six years, and another for around a decade.

In 2023, it took the council an average of 25.8 weeks to turn around a vacant home. according to a response issued to People Before Profit Councillor Conor Reddy earlier this month.

That was an increase on the previous year when it took an average of 21.4 weeks, the figures show.

By contrast, councils in the United Kingdom took four weeks on average in 2019 to re-let an empty social home, says a Housing Agency report.

In November 2023, Robert Buckle, a senior engineer with the council, said at a meeting that – at about €11,000 a home –  the Department of Housing’s contribution toward voids covered only about a quarter of the costs of the work.

So things were “very tight budget-wise”, he said.

In the Dáil that same month, O’Brien, the Housing Minister, said his department’s emphasis was on minimal refurbishment works.

It was also moving from reactive and voids-focused maintenance of social homes to more ongoing planning maintenance, he said.

In other words, working off the idea that councils should do more regular maintenance while homes are occupied – and if they do, they shouldn’t have to spend loads renovating between lettings.

The Department of Housing didn’t respond to a query sent Monday asking what funding is still available, though, for council homes that do require major refurbishment between lettings.