IHBA: State land should ease housing demand
To prevent the boundaries of Dublin spreading further into Leinster it wants surplus land owned by the State and the hundreds of acres of idle land in back gardens and laneways to be used to meet the demand for council housing.
“The time has come for a new planning initiative. Much of this land should be opened for well-planned developments. Higher densities of population lead to more efficient use of resources, particularly public services and utilities,” the IHBA said.
It said the current policy of the American model of lower density suburban sprawl is stretching Dublin to unacceptable limits.
“Our policymakers and our planners, our architects and designers, together with ourselves the builders, need to plan for future housing needs in a more thoughtful, coherent way.”
Demand for houses in Dublin is running at 15,000 to 20,000 a year, but only 10,000 homes are being supplied and the shortage is exacerbated by the difficulty in finding zoned land in the city.
The IHBA said there needs to be an innovate approach to develop affordable housing easing the supply shortage, such as using Government and local authority-owned properties.
“Does it make sense for the Army to have a barracks in Rathmines [south Dublin] covering 40 acres? Should they not move to the Curragh and open up that land for a mixed development scheme?
The planned release of such lands onto the development market would facilitate a supply of zoned and serviced land for social and affordable housing and provide housing to some of the 20,000 families on the list for local authority housing in the Dublin area.”
The lobby group said that if each local authority bundled together three hectares of land, 10,000 social and affordable housing could be produced. It pointed to the success of existing projects where three-bedroom houses are now being sold for €130,000 - €70,000 less than the national average price.
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