Dear Sir,
Sinn Féin’s affordable housing initiative is a refined alternative to the prevailing shared equity scheme and would potentially become more efficient if there is a shift from apartment structures to terraced houses, particularly for smaller households. Terraced properties consisting of two bedrooms tend to be priced between 50% to 80% of the cost of apartments with similar floor space. Attempting to reach Sinn Féin’s targeted housing prices would become more feasible if there are more terraced units allocated for smaller households. This might also bring about a better yield of housing units per billion euro.
A seemingly deceptive consensus exists, which gauges housing affordability by juxtaposing average earnings against semi-detached houses and apartments’ mortgage expenses. However, both these types of housing should actually be categorised under medium-cost, instead of low-cost. Property developers are fond of semi-detached houses as they are dependable and usually generate better profit margins than elementary terraced houses. They also comply with planning density requirements by pairing these semi-detached houses with blocks of flats in the same location. This, however, doesn’t need to be imitated by subsidized state housing.
There’s no denying that apartments have eco-friendly benefits over terraced housing, but these can often be exaggerated. Terraced houses might be blamed for increased car usage, but on the other hand, they utilize more renewable materials such as timber which sequesters carbon, and less high-carbon-emitting materials like steel and concrete, thus lessening their environmental impact.
The debate over small apartments versus terraced houses is notably relevant to leasehold properties since Sinn Féin’s scheme provides potential wherever accommodation is being given to small, ranging from one to two-person households. While not all of these households will expand and relocate, those that do contribute to valuable turnover and amplify the number of benefiting households per house.
Supplying adequate and affordable homes remains a massive challenge. Regardless of the significant improvements in housing commencements and completions, reaching the revised target of the National Planning Framework (NDF) which aims for 50,000 new homes annually seems like quite a hurdle.
Yours sincerely,
Dr. NICHOLAS MANSERGH, MIPI,
Cork.
From my perspective, as a former employee of a planning authority, there seems to be a misalignment between National Policy Framework (NPF) targets and the development plans of individual counties. The housing targets set by the County Development Plans (CDP) are influenced by Regional Spatial and Economic Strategies (RSES), developed by regional assemblies.
The legal responsibility of adopting a county development plan falls to the councillors, who serve as members of planning authorities. However, in practice, their role is severely restricted. They must abide by both Regional Spatial and Economic Strategy guidelines and ministerial and planning regulator policies.
In essence, a county development plan reflects the vision of the local authority chief executive. It’s only fair to note that there is a regulated public consultation process during the revisions of a CDP, with the chief executive obligated to respond to every submission. Yet, again, the RSES must be taken into account.
Many planning authorities adopt a cautious and reserved attitude towards rezoning lands for residential use, even if those lands are fully serviced. To illustrate, in my hometown of Rosslare Harbour, a considerable portion of agricultural-zoned lands within the designated settlement area still retains its status in the county development plan as adopted in April 2022. Furthermore, lands previously zoned and serviced for housing have been reverted back to agricultural usage.
There is good news that the Minister may direct planning authorities to contemplate on zoning more lands for housing. Land use planning is far from simple and our current planning system is confusing and laden with bureaucracy. To make the system more efficient, the forthcoming Planning Bill should expedite the processing of planning applications, limit the unregulated third-party opposition process and restrict avenues to judicial review. The higher courts should not be acting as the final arbiters in matters of planning. – Remaining yours faithfully,
LARRY DUNNE,
Rosslare Harbour,
Co Wexford.