Time for government to direct councils to make sure council tenants have access to amenities in private complexes, TDs say

On a recent Tuesday afternoon, a small group gathered in Cathedral Cafe in the Liberties to talk about the new Newmarket Yards apartment complex around the corner.

Most were tenants living in the 41 homes the council is leasing in the 413-apartment build-to-rent complex between Newmarket and St Luke’s Avenue in Dublin 8.

The little cafe was bustling, the owner serving coffees, chairs scraping the floor as people got up or down, the air full of chat.

A young woman with her baby in a pram said she’d moved into Newmarket Yards in March, and at first she’d thought her key was broken because she couldn’t get in the main door to the apartment complex, into the lobby.

But no, building management told her she wasn’t allowed in the front entrance, or into the main lobby, she says. “They stand with you if you get in, to make sure you don’t go any further,” says the woman, who didn’t want her name published, as there’s someone she’s nervous would find her then.

The council tenants live in the lower floors of a tower separate to the main apartment complex where most of the amenities are, and there’s another – much less grand – entrance for them.

She said she spent seven years in homeless accommodation, bound by rules, observed, judged, told what to do. “I thought I was getting out of all that, but I’m not, there’s still someone better than me,” she says. “There’s clearly a class divide.”

Another tenant, Craig Downes, sitting nearby, on that Tuesday, 30 April, says there are several building amenities council tenants aren’t allowed access to – which isn’t right. “All tenants need to have access to all facilities,” he says.

Across the city, the council has added to its stock of social homes by buying or leasing apartments in private complexes from developers. The legal provision that gives local authorities the power to do this – known as “Part V” (of the Planning and Development Act) – was meant to get more social homes online, and also to reduce social segregation.

Instead, council tenants at private complexes The Davitt in Drimnagh, Hamilton Gardens in Cabra and Newmarket Yards in the Liberties – who pay variable rents based on their incomes – have said they’ve been excluded from areas and amenities that tenants who are renting privately could use.

People Before Profit Councillor Kelsey May Daly, who organised the meeting at Cathedral Cafe, has asked Dublin City Council for an explanation for the “segregation” at Newmarket Yards. And housing spokespeople for Sinn Féin and the Social Democrats say the Department of Housing should make clear to local authorities that these sorts of situations are not acceptable.

“The department needs to give very, very clear guidance by way of a circular to the local authorities to make it very clear that segregation is contrary to both the spirit and the letter of Part V,” said Sinn Féin TD Eoin Ó Broin.

“I think it would be useful if the Minister for Housing issued a circular on the operation of Part V,” said Social Democrats TD Cian O’Callaghan. “They should be able to stipulate conditions around social housing tenants not being excluded.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Housing said that both Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien, a Fianna Fáil TD, and the department believe that the delivery of social housing through Part V is “encouraging integrated development and works to reduce housing segregation all across the country”.

But does the department see the division of council tenants and private tenants living as neighbours in the same complex, with different privileges/access to amenities, as fair?

“The Department plays no role in specific Part V negotiations,” the spokesperson said. “Part V negotiations are negotiated between the Proposer and the Local Authority or AHB. These negotiations may include tenant access to amenities.”

The spokesperson didn’t reply to a query on whether the department would issue a circular to local authorities to make clear that they should not be concluding Part V agreements that do not give council tenants access to basic amenities in their complexes.

A spokesperson for Tuath Housing said yesterday that it manages the social homes at Newmarket Yards, which are all in one building. Its tenants “have unrestricted access to amenities within this block including a roof top garden”.

“The remainder of the development comprising more than 370 homes are not owned or managed by Tuath,” she said.

Neither Bain Capital, the money behind Newmarket Yards, nor property manager MD Property, nor Dublin City Council, have replied to queries about the situation.

Newmarket Yards

The company Carrey Issuer DAC got planning permission to build Newmarket Yards in 2020. That company’s most recent financial statement said it was ultimately controlled by Bain Capital Credit.

Bain Capital says it is “one of the world’s leading private investment firms with approximately $185 billion in assets under management”. The company’s website says Newmarket Yards is a “paragon” for its “ESG pillars”, referring to its environment, social and governance strategy.

A spokesperson for Bain has not addressed – though she acknowledged its receipt – a query sent 1 May on whether the restrictions on council tenants living in Newmarket Yards meet the goal of inclusion included in its ESG strategy.

Since Carrey Issuer DAC got planning permission for Newmarket Yards under planning guidelines specifically for apartments that are built to be rented, rather than bought, there were some specific conditions.

Among these, the build-to-rent planning guidelines allow for smaller apartment sizes, but to compensate for this, they must include shared spaces and amenities. The planning application includes a section called “compensatory measures”.

“The alternative compensatory communal support facilities … include extensive indoor (Resident Support facilities and Resident Services and Amenities) and outdoor (communal amenity space / roof gardens etc.),” the application says.

A document submitted as part of the planning application, relying on work by consultants AECOM, and detailing the developer’s proposal on how to meet its Part V obligations, suggests that council tenants would have limited access to the complex’s amenities.

“AECOM has assumed the Part V located at lower floors … of the twelve storeys tower will have access to communal facilities located at roof terraces of the tower building only”, it says. This is a proposal, however, and it’s not clear if the council accepted it.

The “planning statement” included with the application details the complex’s communal facilities and amenities, as does An Bord Pleanála’s order approving the application, and the Newmarket Yards website. None of these say that some or all of these facilities and amenities will not be accessible to council tenants.

“What amenities are available in an NMY home?” the Newmarket Yards website’s FAQs page asks. The answer lists “5 stunning rooftop terraces”, “sauna, jacuzzi, plunge pool”, as well as co-working facilities, a cinema room, a gym, a residents’ lounge, and a dedicated dog exercise area. “Do you allow pets?” “Absolutely!” it says.

An advert from the council for people near the top of the social housing list to apply for an apartment in Newmarket Yards says they should familiarise themselves with the development, presumably through resources like the complex’s website.

The council choice-based letting advert says “Communal facilities include lifts, bin shed, community room, bike storage, rooftop terrace on the block, shared green space.” A lease one of the council tenants signed doesn’t mention anything about being barred from certain amenities in the complex, although it does say they aren’t allowed pets without prior permission.

And yet when residents moved in they could not use the front entrance, the lobby, or the rooftop terraces, a few of them at the Cathedral Cafe that Tuesday afternoon said. So in addition to feeling they were second-class citizens in their complex, they felt fooled, they said.

The woman who was there with her baby said she hadn’t asked specifically if she could use all the complex’s amenities – why would she think she couldn’t? she asked – but while she was going through the lease with someone from Tuath before signing it, she spoke about looking forward to using them.

“They glossed over it, they didn’t say either way,” the woman said.

A spokesperson for Tuath hasn’t responded to a query on whether it had informed tenants of restrictions on accessing amenities before they signed leases and moved in.

MD Property, which lists Newmarket Yards among the properties it manages, also did not respond to a series of queries sent on 1 May, asking about the details of which amenities council tenants can access in the complex.

It’s okay if all the social homes are in one block, next to each other, said Ó Broin, the Sinn Féin TD and housing spokesperson. “The idea that you pepper pot is kind of patronising because it suggests somehow you shouldn’t have working-class social-housing tenants living together in one place,” he said.

“But no matter what policy you pursue, whether it’s concentration or pepper potting, there’s no justification for denying social housing tenants access to shared facilities,” he said. “So denying children access to playgrounds, having separate entrances for social housing tenants, those things are simply unacceptable.”

Not the first instance

After councillors learned about similar restrictions on council tenants living in The Davitt in Drimnagh and Hamilton Gardens in Cabra last year, they raised it with council managers at meetings.

At the council’s June monthly meeting, then housing chief, Coilín O’Reilly said the crux of the issue was money.

“At the end of the day, councillors, we negotiate a fee that is good value for money, we provide the properties at a social rent,” O’Reilly said. “That additional facilities have to be paid for by somebody.”

Private tenants pay for that themselves through their general service charges, he said. “If we are going to step into this space, we are going to have to identify a budget from somewhere.”

At a meeting of the council’s housing committee in September, independent Councillor Mannix Flynn had a motion on the agenda calling on the council, the Department of Housing and approved housing bodies (AHBs) – charities like Tuath that manage social housing for the council – “to address the issue of discrimination and inequality regarding part five tenancies”.

Although Flynn wasn’t there to move the motion, and so there was no vote on it, councillors at the meeting did discuss the issue with senior executive officer for housing delivery Michelle Robinson.

“What we’re doing here is we’re creating and facilitating – DCC is – social exclusion,” said Social Democrats Councillor Catherine Stocker.

Robinson said that was certainly not the aim. “DCC would never intentionally want to make anyone feel like a second class citizen. I fully appreciate that people can feel like that and exclusion is awful,” she said.

Planning permissions for build-to-rent complexes required that all tenants have access to the kind of shared amenities that compensate for the apartments being slightly smaller. “So everybody does have access to that. Playgrounds are part of that, outside space is part of that,” she said.

Labour Councillor Alison Gilliland, chair of the housing committee, said that there’s a distinction between access to playgrounds and car parks, and “the plus plus” amenities in a complex.

At both The Davitt and Hamilton Gardens, residents were told they could pay a monthly fee to get access to amenities in the building. For example, at Hamilton Gardens, council tenants were given an information sheet saying if they wanted full access, it’d cost €208 per month, on top of their rent.

Neither the council, nor MD Property nor Tuath has responded to queries on whether Newmarket Yards residents can pay a fee to get full access to the complex’s amenities, and if so, how much they’d have to pay.

But, speaking about Hamilton Gardens back in September, Fianna Fáil Councillor Eimer McCormack said the fee there was “extortionately priced”, and that she’d been involved in negotiating it down. “We know our tenants cannot afford €200 a month or €180 or €150,” she said.

Robinson, the council senior executive officer for housing delivery, seemed to agree. “Any additional amount can really be prohibitive for any family,” she said.

Sinn Féin Councillor Daithí Doolan asked whether it would be possible for the council to negotiate with the management companies to subsidise such fees.

Should the department step in?

Back in 1999, when members of the Oireachteas were discussing whether to introduce Part V as part of the Planning and Development Act 2000, and if so, in what form, some foresaw difficulties with it.

In making the government’s argument for the provision, Fianna Fáil TD Noel Dempsey, then Minister for Environment and Local Government, said that “Society in Ireland has paid too high a price for the segregation of the past and we must now seek to support more inclusive and better integrated communities in the future.”

Fine Gael Senator Fintan Coogan said he supported “the concept of social integration”, but “I am concerned that what might occur is that … there will be a tendency to build a wall around the larger houses and exclude the others – almost like a walled city which kept out the poor.”

Although it was not the only reason the government introduced Part V, social inclusion was there as a goal from the start and remains one. “The Part V provisions seek to promote social integration,” current Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien said in answer to a parliamentary question in March.

Ó Broin, the Sinn Féin TD and housing spokesperson, said Friday that “There is no justification for tenants of Part V units to be denied access to any communal services or amenities in their residential building.”

“If government policy is that part V is not just about delivery of units, but promotion of integration, then anything which runs contrary to that such as segregation needs to be reversed,” he said.

O’Callaghan, the Social Democrats TD and housing spokesperson, said similar.

“There’s certainly no national policy around Part V social housing tenancies being different to other accommodation in the building,” he said. “It’s not meant to happen. There shouldn’t be forms of segregation or exclusion or stigmatisation.”

What’s the solution? Both TDs said that there’s no need for legislation.

“It shouldn’t be necessary to write legislation to stop something from happening that shouldn’t be happening in the first place,” O’Callaghan said.

“That is a matter for government to set out a policy to ensure that no local authority enters into any such Part V arrangements,” Ó Broin said. “It just requires clear direction from the department of housing and the Minister for Housing.”

If there’s an additional cost for council tenants to access the amenities in their apartment complex, who should pay that?

O’Callaghan said that council tenants should automatically have access to “basic and standard amenities”.

“Which are the kinds of things you’d expect everyone to have access to without paying additional fees, which is your communal areas, your playgrounds, all those kinds of things,” he said.

“Look if there’s some sort of additional facilities that you wouldn’t expect to come as part of housing, I can see how there could be some discussion or discretion around that,” he said.

Ó Broin said that “If the council acquire Part V units, and there’s a management fee of X, then the management fee should be paid and the council tenant should have exactly the same access to services and amenities as any other tenants.”

At the September meeting of Dublin City Council’s housing committee, Right to Change Councillor Pat Dunne said that the council managers were focusing on the short-term cash costs of acquiring social homes from developers under Part V.

But “It’s an issue of what is the cost of social exclusion?” Dunne said. “There’s a long-term benefit of social inclusion which cannot be costed. That’s the policy that we should adopt.”