‘Our Dublin-focused housing policy will eventually lead to social unrest’
The newly-appointed chair of the State’s new land agency aims to bring radical reforms, writes Philip Ryan
AS the 8am train to Limerick passed by the Clondalkin Station on the outskirts of Dublin, John Moran pointed out the window of the carriage and asked: “Why are there no houses there?”
What irked Moran were the acres of undeveloped rolling green fields surrounding a train station less than 15 minutes from the city centre.
The former Department of Finance secretary general has immersed himself in housing policy over the past two years. It began as almost a pet project, if you could call it that, to redevelop his home town of Limerick into a modern city.
But just before Christmas, he was appointed as the chair of the Land Development Agency — a mammoth new State body which the Government claims will be the antidote to the sickness in our housing market.
The powerful agency, or the LDA as it will be known, is tasked with hoovering up publicly owned and private land banks which will be developed over time into new communities. Moran will chair a panel of heavyweights from the private and public sector who will be responsible for overseeing a €1.25bn war chest.
Moran has lots of ideas about what should be done with this cash pile. If he will have his way remains to be seen, but his appointment shows the Government is interested in his ideas. And he has lots of ideas.
He’s a busy man and that’s why he wanted to meet on the train. He also wanted to spend time, around three hours, setting out his vision for the LDA.
Two of those hours were spent giving background on his thought process before a formal interview could begin. A book on The Great Famine was produced at one stage to illustrate why Irish homeowners need to finally shake off the shackles of our colonial past.
The other reason behind the train trip was Moran wanted an opportunity to show off Limerick where he is converting a four-storey Georgian building into nine separate living spaces, and also communal spaces.
This is very much part of his vision for the future accommodation in Ireland — more shared living in city centres and more renting.
After the brief tour of Limerick City, he eventually sits down to talk. He speaks rapidly and passionately about housing. He wants radical changes. Developing Limerick and other regional areas is critical, Mr Moran says. He believes the State’s fixation on building in Dublin will eventually lead to a breakdown of Irish society.
“If we continue generation after generation to migrate to Dublin, we will effectively end up with everyone living in Dublin and we will have the type of social unrest issues that we have seen dictate the divisions in society in the UK, in the US and other places,” he says.
He says the State should “reverse the magnetic force of Dublin” by developing key infrastructure projects in other cities. “In other countries the best hospital is not necessarily in the capital and the best university is not necessarily in the capital,” he adds.
He wants people to think differently about where they call home. For instance, he questions the Irish obsession with the three bed semi-d and insists the LDA should focus on developing city centre apartments.
“If we continue to do the three bed semi-d we will continue to see the type of development we have seen in the last couple of decades which requires our cities, including Dublin, to spread further and further out,” he says
“It increases commuting distances for people. They tend to use cars because you can’t put in good public transport and it is hard to make those large semi-d housing developments, if we are honest about it, into really exciting and interesting places because everything tends to be individualised,” he adds.
But how is he going to make apartment living appealing to the average Irish family?
“First of all by making it attractive for people to live in urban areas that have higher density which itself allows for the provision of better services because it is more proficient to provide services in higher density areas but it requires a sharing of spaces, so instead of everybody having their own private garden for their kids, potentially there is a much more enjoyable shared playground they can use,” he says.
He wants to change the “national psyche” away from the dream of family living in suburbia and encourage people to consider living in cities for their entire lives.
Living in cities should be seen as desirable for all age groups and families of every description, he says. He also wants to introduce new types of affordable State-owned rental accommodation where rents would be linked to inflation or another index.
“If we can take out the speculative part of the cost of development at some level, you take out the developers’ profit element and maybe we can just bring in builders and build the model ourselves. We can then provide people who want to rent a property that is affordable today and doesn’t jump every time rents jump across the country,” he says.
Moran envisages major city developments where people can move between long-term rental accommodations of varying sizes depending on the stage of their lives. The State might build these communities using a cost rental approach which would then allow people sign rental contracts which would expire when they do.
“Imagine a more flexible model in which the State or investors own a development or a housing community under circumstances where you have the right to start at the beginning and you rent an apartment. Then when two or three kids are coming down the track you are allowed to rent a larger unit in the same area because it is of a scale that people are leaving and coming all the time. Then you get to 60 or 65 and you decide it would be nice to scale down and you move down,” Moran says.
A safety net could even be introduced to ensure older residents do not have to worry about rent in their later years. “Is there a way to allow that flexibility but also allow renters of that accommodation to pay for the accommodation for their life during the period they are working rather than worrying about it when they get to retirement age?” he asks.
Moran is also keenly aware of the Government’s aim to dramatically reduce the country’s carbon footprint.
To realise this, Moran wants the agency to develop communities where there will be no need for car parking spaces.
He says cars should be an “option rather than a necessity” in the future. “That means it has it be done in conjunction with transport options, schools, retail and it leads you towards a conclusion that the best sites for the LDA to be focusing on are those in urban areas where already some of that infrastructure exists,” he says.
However, he insists the State should not just focus on areas where there is already a high density of residential accommodation. He says the LDA should also take an ‘‘if you build it, they will come’’ approach when choosing development sites as it will make more financial sense in the long term.
“In some countries they build a metro station before they build apartments so it is waiting ready to go because in some respects it is almost easier to build that first and if you know the value is going to go up then you can increase the value by building the metro station,” he says.
Moran’s ideas are all very good but he will be up against Minister for Housing Eoghan Murphy who has campaigned against a new metro line in his own constituency. He will also have to deal with the country’s planning laws which can delay even the smallest of projects for years.
Moran says the Government should examine the State’s compulsory purchase order (CPO) powers. He says current legislation makes it “too easy for people to drag out a process” which is “very frustrating for the rest of us who are looking for houses or looking for services”.
He wants to start a debate about the rights of people who are “lucky enough” to own houses in good areas which have seen their value rise due to Government investment and those struggling to find accommodation or paying sky-rocketing rents.
“You have to be able to weigh up the interests of the people who are currently suffering in terms of lifestyle, in terms of affordability and housing or commutes… and weigh all of that up against the rights of the people who are lucky enough to currently own houses or currently live in the right neighbourhoods with trains and things like that,” he says.
He wants to be able to develop land quickly and has some radical ideas how the State might do this.
“There are some countries in Europe where, for example, when a house is sold or a property is sold, the State has almost a right of first refusal to buy so that at some level they can plan decades forward and start to acquire property as it become available,” he says.
“It may be that you allow people to live in that house or to have that land for period of time but you know with some certainty that it becomes available after 10 years or 15 years or whatever it may be,” he adds.
Moran also has some politically unpopular views on the local property tax which he says by international standards is “very low”. He believes the State is not getting its bang for its buck when it comes to recouping taxes for services they provide in certain affluent areas.
“All the people who were in home ownership at the time the tax was introduced, almost all of their houses have gone up considerably in value and the local property tax is a very small percentage of one per cent of their value,” he says.
“Whereas the person renting has never seen that value and in fact their rent has been going up so at some level it comes back to my point about the balance of fairness — you have to think about everybody’s respective positions.
“Often times, the reason the value has gone up is because the Government has intervened and put in a tramway, put in some services, make the area more desirable, done up the public area and this is just a little bit of recovery that the State gets back for improving the quality of the neighbourhood and therefore that is why property taxes in other jurisdictions are at much higher rates than in Ireland because they, in effect, reward good behaviour by local authorities,” he adds.
Moran concludes by saying the Government should consider reducing property tax for apartment owners in urban environments to move people away from suburbia and the commuter belt.
“Little tweaks might actually make a big difference, not because they are big amounts of money but because they send a strong message that the State is supporting one form of living over another,” he says.
‘Cars should be an option rather than a necessity in the future’ ‘Little tweaks might make a big difference because they send a message’