The article is paywalled, but a very good explanation of the proposal, the main takeaway in numbers is
>The model shows the upper limit of what might be built if street votes were enacted, and homeowners were incentivised to build by the prospect of €600,000 profits.
>Tolan’s model is sampled from urban and suburban households, which according to the CSO in 2017 made up 68.3 per cent of all households. Assuming a middle-of-the-range profit hurdle, he found Street Plans made sense for ten per cent of households.
>If you assume these homeowner-developers build homes of average size, Street Plans could enable 447,000 additional homes — or even as many as 681,000 if people were willing to make somewhat lower profits.
Interesting idea but considering we have failed to even get units above shops back on the market, I feel this is a little too ambitious for those in charge.
I don’t have access to the article so can’t read it, but the problem right now I would have thought is capacity for the industry. The planning holdups are frustrating and add cost and create other problems, but builders aren’t standing around idle. We could provide incentives to build 100,000 homes today, but they can’t be built if someone isn’t available to build them.
Government: “Help we have a housing crisis!”
Literally Everyone: “Have you considered making it legal to build housing?”
Government: “Come on now, don’t be ridiculous”
There’s lots of blurb telling how amazing it is and how many people support it, but I found it very difficult to understand what specifically they were proposing here.
Having looked through the report, they’re suggesting that groups of residents in a housing estate would jointly agree to demolish their houses, build larger replacements, and include flats underneath to sell separately. The scheme would be agreed mainly by residents, designed by an architect, and signed off by local authorities.
Sure it sounds great in theory, but I can’t see it working in practice. Firstly, everyone would have to agree on the principle, and I don’t think that’s likely – a settled elderly person won’t want the hassle. If you have one stubborn person will it scupper the whole scheme? Next, they’d all need to move out and rent for the duration of construction work (estimated to be one year) – not easy when you’ve kids in a school and you have to put half your possessions in storage. Finally, everyone would have to sell an apartment on the footprint of their house, which is not ideal. I have a very quiet house and neighbours, and wouldn’t want to threaten that.
So, in my opinion this is an aspirational, theoretical plan that is unlikely to be implemented, and the estimated number of new units is totally unrealistic.
I’ve a better idea for solving housing crisis.
My proposal is that they have an architectural agency come up with a standardized design for an apartment block. Maybe 6 to 8 storeys. It can be high quality A-rated with appropriate mix of 1,2,3 bedroom apartments. But it’s standardized down to the light switches and taps. Maybe it’s a block of 100 or 200 units. Or maybe it’s flexible.
Then with economy of scale and other efficiencies, this saves time and money. Also we can stream line planning permission for this design. Then the government provides the land and infrastructure. It can be an appropriate mix of social, cost rental, affordable etc. Then just get building in the areas that need it most which is the cities really.
Maybe also some clever prefab building method could be used to save time and money.
The Soviets were doing this in the 1950s and 1960s.
I think it could be very effective and efficient. In 5 or 10 years of building, crisis could be over.
Most will just stay vacant or used as Air BnB
No hope
So…
Nothing concrete?
I suspect that whoever dreamt this plan up hasn’t read the Irish constitution and didn’t understand environmental regulations.
It’s a great idea in theory but won’t stand up to a constitutional challenge.
It will be a brave, and rich, organisation that tries to take a house away from someone who doesn’t want, and doesn’t need, to sell.
11 comments
The article is paywalled, but a very good explanation of the proposal, the main takeaway in numbers is
>The model shows the upper limit of what might be built if street votes were enacted, and homeowners were incentivised to build by the prospect of €600,000 profits.
>Tolan’s model is sampled from urban and suburban households, which according to the CSO in 2017 made up 68.3 per cent of all households. Assuming a middle-of-the-range profit hurdle, he found Street Plans made sense for ten per cent of households.
>If you assume these homeowner-developers build homes of average size, Street Plans could enable 447,000 additional homes — or even as many as 681,000 if people were willing to make somewhat lower profits.
The actual plan isn’t of course paywalled and can be looked at here: https://betterplanning.ie/street-plans/
With a short summary on twitter: https://twitter.com/BPAIreland/status/1694740105880027283
“could”
tl;dr:
Owner-led infill development.
Interesting idea but considering we have failed to even get units above shops back on the market, I feel this is a little too ambitious for those in charge.
I don’t have access to the article so can’t read it, but the problem right now I would have thought is capacity for the industry. The planning holdups are frustrating and add cost and create other problems, but builders aren’t standing around idle. We could provide incentives to build 100,000 homes today, but they can’t be built if someone isn’t available to build them.
Government: “Help we have a housing crisis!”
Literally Everyone: “Have you considered making it legal to build housing?”
Government: “Come on now, don’t be ridiculous”
There’s lots of blurb telling how amazing it is and how many people support it, but I found it very difficult to understand what specifically they were proposing here.
Having looked through the report, they’re suggesting that groups of residents in a housing estate would jointly agree to demolish their houses, build larger replacements, and include flats underneath to sell separately. The scheme would be agreed mainly by residents, designed by an architect, and signed off by local authorities.
Sure it sounds great in theory, but I can’t see it working in practice. Firstly, everyone would have to agree on the principle, and I don’t think that’s likely – a settled elderly person won’t want the hassle. If you have one stubborn person will it scupper the whole scheme? Next, they’d all need to move out and rent for the duration of construction work (estimated to be one year) – not easy when you’ve kids in a school and you have to put half your possessions in storage. Finally, everyone would have to sell an apartment on the footprint of their house, which is not ideal. I have a very quiet house and neighbours, and wouldn’t want to threaten that.
So, in my opinion this is an aspirational, theoretical plan that is unlikely to be implemented, and the estimated number of new units is totally unrealistic.
I’ve a better idea for solving housing crisis.
My proposal is that they have an architectural agency come up with a standardized design for an apartment block. Maybe 6 to 8 storeys. It can be high quality A-rated with appropriate mix of 1,2,3 bedroom apartments. But it’s standardized down to the light switches and taps. Maybe it’s a block of 100 or 200 units. Or maybe it’s flexible.
Then with economy of scale and other efficiencies, this saves time and money. Also we can stream line planning permission for this design. Then the government provides the land and infrastructure. It can be an appropriate mix of social, cost rental, affordable etc. Then just get building in the areas that need it most which is the cities really.
Maybe also some clever prefab building method could be used to save time and money.
The Soviets were doing this in the 1950s and 1960s.
I think it could be very effective and efficient. In 5 or 10 years of building, crisis could be over.
Most will just stay vacant or used as Air BnB
No hope
So…
Nothing concrete?
I suspect that whoever dreamt this plan up hasn’t read the Irish constitution and didn’t understand environmental regulations.
It’s a great idea in theory but won’t stand up to a constitutional challenge.
It will be a brave, and rich, organisation that tries to take a house away from someone who doesn’t want, and doesn’t need, to sell.