A spokesperson for the Dublin Region Homeless Executive said its priority was “to ensure there is an adequate provision of accommodation for people experiencing homelessness”.
Much of Park House on Ashdale Road in Terenure is a building site.
A cement mixer whirrs in the garden. A sign warns of the need for helmets and protective footwear.
But Margaret Bergin still lives with her partner in an apartment on the ground floor in the west wing of the big brick house with a gabled roof – as they have for about a decade, she says.
Earlier this year, they got a notice to quit on the grounds of substantial refurbishment. (The building recently switched hands, and they had got an earlier notice to leave last summer on grounds of sale, she says.)
“It’s been extremely stressful,” says Bergin. “You’re constantly thinking, what’s going to happen? Where are we going to go from here?”
They also have questions, she says, about why they have to leave.
In March, the current owner, Coolebridge Limited – which bought the building in September 2024 – asked Dublin City Council whether using the building for homeless accommodation would need planning permission.
Coolebridge Limited hasn’t responded to queries sent on Monday, asking to talk about Park House, and sent on Tuesday asking whether its intention was to convert it to homeless accommodation and how it responds to concerns about displacement of tenants to enable that.
Time and again across the city, long-term tenants have been evicted from their homes and then the same buildings have been turned into homeless accommodation.
In August 2024, renters were asked to leave the big Tramco Building in Rathmines. Later, Dublin Region Homeless Executive (DRHE) said it had contracted that as shelter for those who are homeless.
Meanwhile, the high-profile Tathony House block in Kilmainham, from which tenants were given notices of termination in 2022 which they contested, is set to become a homeless hostel, The Currency reported last week.
Further back, renters were evicted from a shared home on Drumcondra Road Lower so it could be sold, only for it to quickly be turned into homeless accommodation after the sale.
“It's bananas,” says Madeleine Johansson, a People Before Profit councillor who was one of those living in Tathony House. “People could end up back in the same place they lived before but now it’s homeless accommodation.”
Bergin, the Park House tenant, says state agencies who contract for buildings “need to look at the background”. “Existing tenants in a building should not have to be affected. That needs to be looked at,” she says.
The problem is that it is simply more profitable to provide emergency accommodation than to rent homes normally, says Johansson.
As long as Dublin City Council relies on privately owned buildings for homeless accommodation, the incentive is there for an owner to convert a building from a mainstream rental into a homeless hostel.
Dublin City Council doesn’t appear to have a way to check and ensure that they are not powering evictions and the displacement of long-term tenants.
They do tender for vacant properties, said a spokesperson. “Private Operators can submit vacant properties with appropriate planning permission through the tender process,” they said on 23 April.
But buildings haven’t always had the right planning permission. They also aren’t always vacant. And, even when they are, they may not have been for long.
In March 2020, renters living in a converted warehouse on Slaney Road in Glasnevin were asked to leave at short notice.
The person controlling and renting out the building – who was not the owner – had been in discussion with Dublin City Council about converting it to homeless accommodation.
Dublin City Council pulled out of the deal.
The council withdrew its interest “once it became clear that there was a question mark about people who were previously residing there”, said a council spokesperson at the time.
It is unclear if the council still has the same policy, though.
In August last year, tenants in the Tramco building in Rathmines were served with notices to quit.
Tenants appealed the notices to the Residential Tenancies Board and won. The owner said he planned to appeal those decisions.
In any case, though, tenants also later learnt that the building was earmarked for homeless accommodation.
“The DRHE contracted the property as vacant and was not made aware of any affected persons, said a DRHE spokesperson in November.
“The property is a hotel and has recently been made available to use as emergency accommodation,” they said at the time.
They haven’t said whether they have pulled out of the contract for that building.
As for Park House, where Bergin lives, the DRHE hasn’t yet responded to queries as to whether it has a contract for that building.
But in a back-and-forth with council planners about use of the building, Coolebridge Limited said that it would include a management office “providing for resident management, tenancy arrangements and co-ordination with the Dublin Region Homeless Executive (DRHE)”.
Bergin says that trying to find somewhere else to live has proved virtually impossible. “There’s a big demand for places. I’ve been checking.”
A spokesperson for Dublin City Council said that, “The priority for the DRHE is to ensure there is an adequate provision of accommodation for people experiencing homelessness.”
The DRHE strongly encourages proposals from the NGO sector, as well as providing council-owned buildings where possible, they said. “However, the majority of emergency accommodation provision is currently sourced through the private sector.”
It is looking to own more buildings itself, they said. “The DRHE is seeking properties to develop or acquire for emergency accommodation.”
In 2025, the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage has provided a capital fund for this purpose, they said.
In March, Coolebridge Limited asked Dublin City Council for a decision on whether converting Park House to homeless accommodation would be considered “exempted development” or not.
In other words, whether it needed planning permission.
Half the building had been used as a montessori, the company said, but that use was supposed to be temporary and to revert back to residential. The other half – where Bergin and others live – is residential, it said.
In its application, Coolebridge Limited pointed out that the socio-economic status of whoever is living there shouldn’t be a planning consideration and that they wouldn’t be providing any care on site.
In their response, council planners agreed with this. Socio-economic status doesn’t matter, they said.
But it did seem that what they were doing was a more intensive use that made it a hostel or hotel, rather than to a home – and that meant that wasn’t exempted development and would require planning permission, they said.
Also, switching the creche side of the building back to a kind of residential use would be a change of use that needed planning permission, they said.
The finding that residential use and a hostel use are different mirrors a ruling by An Bord Pleanála in June 2023.
In that case, An Bord Pleanála found that converting a residential building to homeless accommodation at 15/17 Drumcondra Road was a change of use that required planning permission.
Brimwood Limited – one of the directors of which is former Monaghan GAA football manager, Séamus McEnaney – had opened a new homeless hostel in that building a few years earlier.
Right before that, it had been a residential building, says Green Party Councillor Janet Horner, who used to live there along with 18 other tenants.
It wasn’t her former landlord’s fault she was evicted, Horner says. He needed to sell the property, she says.
She thought about trying to form a co-op with other tenants but it didn’t work out. And, after the building was sold, the new owners converted it into homeless accommodation, she says.
An Bord Pleanála rejected Brimwood Limited’s contention that the building was still in residential use after being converted to a homeless hostel.
A hostel wasn’t a permitted use under its Z2 zoning, an inspector said. And, if the hostel was a long-term residential use, it wouldn't in this case meet minimum standards, he said.
“Particularly having regard to the inadequate provision of bedroom accommodation, the absence of living areas, and the inadequate provision of natural light and ventilation,” he said.
He also flagged that the contention that no care was provided on site was in breach of all local and national policy for homeless services, which advocates “a wraparound person-centred support system for those in homeless accommodation”, says the inspector’s report.
“Given the apparent absence of care and support services in this facility, it is considered that the proposed development would result in a substandard form of homeless accommodation,” said the report.
That “would be contrary to local and national housing policy and the proper planning and sustainable development of the area”, it said.
Planning considerations around Tathony House and the Tramco Building are a little different.
Tathony House was originally built as an aparthotel, says Johansson, although it had been people’s homes for many years. So too, was the Tramco building.
But still, former Dublin City Council planner Kieran Rose says he thinks the original aparthotel use is irrelevant.
Once the building has been used for a purpose for more than seven years, without the council taking enforcement action then that is the “established use”, he says.
Since both Tramco and Tathony House had long-standing residents, “residential is the actual use”, he says, “the owners would need to apply to go back to a hotel”.
As Johansson sees it, operating homeless accommodation is more profitable for owners than ordinary rentals, so the system incentivises them to flip properties towards that.
“It's a symptom of a sick system,” she says.
One solution would be to ban “no fault” evictions, she says, like those on grounds of sale. And the council should buy empty commercial buildings to convert into emergency accommodation, she says.
Horner, the Green Party councillor, says that the council is desperate for buildings to use as emergency accommodation.
It isn’t in a position to turn down those that were, up until recently, someone’s home, she says.
“There is a strategy for IPAS to move towards a public provision model,” she says, referring to the International Protection Accommodation Service, the agency responsible for housing asylum seekers.
“We need a similar strategy for homelessness,” she says.
The Department of Housing hasn’t responded to queries about why councils don’t build facilities themselves using emergency powers, or whether it had issued guidance on this, which it said it would do last year.
Guidelines that the department issued in 2022 say that councils should buy properties or build facilities themselves where possible.
They say: “To meet the need of those presenting as homeless and to reduce reliance on commercial hotel and B&B accommodation, it is important that local authorities review capacity required and identify properties that can be acquired for conversion or land for purpose built facilities.”
There is debate over whether there is a shortage of residentially zoned land and what’s holding homes up.
Some say that the different types of tenure should be laid out in master plans or zoning to meet the housing needs in an area.
The Department of Housing has vetoed the council’s designs for the Herbert Simms-designed Pearse House in the south inner-city.
This comes a few years after it rolled out a previous IT system that was supposed to include this function, among others, and went millions over budget.
