New apartment guidelines 'a backward step' that 'will see return to shoebox homes'
ALONE has expressed disappointment at Minister Alan Kelly’s decision to allow developers to build studio apartments up to 27% smaller than the current minimum apartment size.
New guidelines on apartment sizes are being criticised as being in favour of builders and developers only.
Sean Moynihan, the CEO of the charity that supports older people to age at home, said: "We see this as a backward step for the housing market, we in ALONE, along with many other organisations spent years campaigning for the abolition of bedsits.
"The standard of housing needs to be improved not diminished.
"We would be concerned that it will be our older persons who end up in living in these tiny studio apartments, as happened recently when Dublin City Council reopened 300 bedsits. Studies have shown us that older persons spend more time in their home than any other demographic; the average 80 year old will spend 80% of their day at home. They need a space that they can live in – not somewhere to just exist.
"We believe that the Minister’s energy would be better focussed on simplifying the process for developing social housing rather than reducing the standards to make things easier for developers. There should also be an increased focus on ensuring the Social Housing Strategy targets are met, as we believe they are currently way off target."
Environment Minister Alan Kelly published the new guidelines yesterday which reduce the minimum size of apartments to 45 square metres and studios to 40 square metres.
New apartment minimum size guidelines introduced by government should be familiar to many of us of a particular age pic.twitter.com/uTQdOI7iJy
— Ken Curtin 🇮🇪 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 (@kencurtin) December 22, 2015
Lecturer in housing studies with DIT, Lorcan Sirr, said that the regulations have no economic rationale and are a return to "shoe-box"-style homes.
"If you're trying to create a city, a sustainable city where people live and they don't all want cars and they want to walk around the place and live near their work, you need to create apartments that people want to live in for a long time," he said.
"Not when you're 18-30, then you get married, you move to the suburbs, buy a car and commuting."
However, Environment Minister Alan Kelly said that new apartment size guidelines could make apartments more affordable in Dublin.
“It will result in cheaper apartments,” said Minister Kelly.
“We believe that the change in the cost ratio will ensure that there are cheaper apartments.
“If somebody was going to build an apartment block in Dublin city centre at the moment, by the way, they would be doing so at a loss, but they were going to do it, I would suspect that you’re talking, at a minimum, in the €400,000 mark, and what we need to do is to get it down to the €300,000 mark, and below.”
