The Labour Party Spokesperson for Urban Regeneration has criticised the construction industry’s focus on student housing in light of the current national housing crisis, referring to the construction of student accommodation as a “guaranteed golden goose”.
In a statement on the Labour Party’s website, Joe Costello, a former Minister of State for Trade and Development and former TD for Dublin Central, referenced the growth of student accommodation units in his own constituency. Dublin Central, he stated, “since the foundation of the State” has never had more than 100 units of student accommodation, but “in the last two years alone, 3,300 units have received planning permission and most are under construction. Over 2,500 more units are awaiting the outcome of planning applications”.
“The construction industry has begun to go crazy again”, Costello stated.
The lack of housing available for students has reached a crisis point in recent years, with the Higher Education Authority estimating that there is an unmet demand of 25,000 student beds nationally. In July, the government outlined plans to facilitate the creation of an additional 7,000 student accommodation places by the end of 2019, as well as the creation of a national student accommodation strategy in 2017 as part of the government’s action plan to address housing and homelessness.
“In the current homeless and housing emergency the focus of the construction industry should be firmly on the provision of family homes until the crisis is over”, Costello stated.
Focusing on the area of the North Inner City where “in the space of only two years an incredible 8,000 units have been placed in the pipeline”, Costello said that, in the space of two years, more than 50 per cent of the number of the 15,000 units estimated to be needed by the HEA in Dublin “are in the pipeline for a small area”.
“The student accommodation bubble has already distorted the housing market in the North Inner City. If it continues to spread it will create a surplus of unwanted bed-spaces all over the country similar to the holiday home disaster of the recent past.”
A number of large-scale accommodation projects have been announced by developers in Dublin, with thousands of places to be created in 2017, with a number of projects, including a €40 million facility on Thomas St, already completed.
In an email statement to The University Times, Annie Hoey, President of the Union of Students in Ireland (USI), stated that “Mr Costello misses the point that more student accommodation frees up the private rental market.”
“A key point of USI’s arguments for more purpose built student accommodation”, Hoey continued. “USI believes that housing is a human right, and should be treated as such for everyone. USI recognises the severe crisis of homelessness on our streets, an issue which affects students too, but this stirring message of fighting for slices of the same cake only exacerbates problems and targets one cohort unfairly.”
“The accommodation crisis will not be solved by various housing advocates pitting one housing crisis against the other. In a time of crisis, we need solutions and solidarity – not problems.”
Referencing the high costs of rental accommodation and the ongoing homelessness crisis as well as the “chronic shortage of public and private residential housing in the local communities throughout the North Inner City”, Costello stated that large-scale student housing complexes are “unknown” to Irish cities: “The sheer density of such accommodation in a small area will create a huge imbalance with the existing residential population, place pressure on local services and give rise to a host of problems in local neighbourhoods.”
Costello cited the reluctance of developers to build “because of the 10% social housing clause and because the accommodation standards and floor space requirements are more demanding. Open space is at a premium now” and because “huge profits are not guaranteed”.
Referring to Dublin City Council’s City Development Plan, published in 2016, he stated that “the failure to control the unprecedented proliferation of student accommodation has already made a mockery” of the plan, which states that the planning authority “will have regard to the pattern and distribution of accommodation in the locality, and will resist the overconcentration of such schemes in any one area”.
