Councillors continue to push back against segregation in apartment complexes

The Cuán Association, a residents' group for the big development at Grand Canal Harbour, has won awards and grants for their work in the Liberties community, said Ciarán Ó Meachair, a Sinn Féin councillor, at a council meeting on Wednesday afternoon.

"And they can't even hold meetings on site, they can't hold events on site," he said.

Because the association is led by social tenants, who aren't allowed to use many of the common facilities. "It's absolutely unjustifiable and something needs to be done about it," said Ó Meachair, at the South Central Area Committee.

This is not the only apartment complex in the city where this sort of thing is happening.

Indeed, that social housing tenants in big apartment complexes across the city are being denied access to the shared amenities enjoyed by their private-rental neighbours – even when they are willing to pay, as in this case – is being raised more and more frequently in the council chamber, as well as the Dáil.

Dublin City Council owns 2,570 homes in 385 complexes across the city, bought via a legal provision known as "Part V" – meant to get more social homes online, and also to reduce social segregation.

Wednesday was not the first time that councillors have raised the issue of equal access to facilities at Grand Canal Harbour newish apartment complex.

But despite the attention, a council official said that the situation at Grand Canal Harbour was still at an impasse.

The council's leasing department and Tuath Housing, the approved housing body which handles the social homes in the complex, have met with the property manager on a number of occasions, said Bevin Herbert, a senior executive officer for the council's South Central Area.

"They haven't been able to progress it," she said.

Adding to the frustration is that the complex got planning permission as a "build-to-rent" development, with the guidelines for such complexes emphasising the importance of the shared communal facilities to the model.

Access to facilities at Grand Canal Harbour was flagged by council staff during a pre-planning meeting in February 2019 with the developer, ahead of the application being filed.

"Must demonstrate that amenities are accessible to all units regardless of which block a resident resides in," says a note after one meeting in February 2019.

But the current situation isn't a planning issue, said a spokesperson for Dublin City Council by email on Thursday.

"If a planning permission approved common areas or amenities such as lounge, co-working spaces, gyms etc, and those facilities are physically provided in accordance with the approved plans, planning compliance has been achieved," they said.

"Arrangements regarding booking these amenities or whether fees are charged are operational and management matters rather than planning matters," they said.

Trying to talk

At Wednesday's meeting, Herbert gave a brief update on the engagement so far between the council and other parties involved with Grand Canal Harbour.

She had been in touch with the council's leasing department, she said, and it isn't in the council's budget to cover the fees itself.

"So, under the funding for leasing that we get from the department, there's no allowance for, we don't get funding to pay for access to communal spaces for social housing tenants," she said.

The leasing department and Tuath Housing, though, had put forward an option that tenants pay for themselves, she said.

But "Aramark didn't seem to be, I suppose, agreeable to that", said Herbert, referring to one of the building's property managers.

Ó Meachair, the Sinn Féin councillor, said in response that he wanted to put on record that residents have said they are willing to cover the costs themselves of access to amenities. And are still getting nowhere.

Later, by email, a spokesperson for Aramark said this issue doesn't fall under its remit.

"Aramark’s involvement at Grand Canal Harbour relates only to the upkeep of the shared areas across the development. We are not part of any decisions on how the tenancies are managed or on who can use the amenity spaces," they said.

"Queries about the social housing arrangements are a matter for Túath Housing," they said.

Dublin City Council holds the 25-year lease for the social homes in the block, while Tuath Housing manages them. But there are so many other stakeholders in the complex that it can be hard to work out who is making what decisions, said Ó Meachair, the Sinn Féin councillor.

"It's too many cooks spoil the broth, kind of thing," he said. "It seems like they are playing off each other."

Dermot Lacey, a Labour councillor, said that at the root of this is an issue with the way the council delivers social homes.

He cites a different example, in which an approved housing body has said that tenants can't have pets while the private renters in a complex are allowed.

"It's a further example of the more we privatise, even through a socialised body" – such as an approved housing body – "the less control the public and public representatives have over these things", he said.

Lynn Hooper, secretary of Cuán Association at Grand Canal Harbour, says that when she sent out an email a couple of weeks ago in another push to get access to a community room, the list of cc'ed addresses was long.

It included, she says, the council, councillors, Tuath Housing, Aramark, as well as DubLiv, the integrated property management platform owned by Marlet Property Group, which owns the wider complex.

But the residents' association hasn't gotten anywhere, she says.

Building community

The residents association now includes tenants across the Grand Canal Harbour, says Hooper. Both private rental tenants, and social.

They want to run events on site, to bring people together, but just can't. "We can't do knitting classes, we can't do book clubs," she says.

They had been talking with tenants in the private rental blocks who wanted to teach classes and invite over the social tenants to use the communal rooms for those, but it all got uncomfortable and messy because of this question of access, she said.

There were all kinds of ideas, she says. "Pilates, meditation, languages, baking. And we don't have anywhere to run these classes in the complex."

When the planning application went in for Grand Canal Harbour in October 2019, it was for a build-to-rent complex.

Department of Housing apartment guidelines in place at the time said that applications for build-to-rent complexes had to include "detailed proposals for supporting communal and recreational amenities", and the extent of those would be agreed by the planning authority and developer.

And, the planning application for Grand Canal Harbour is scattered through with references to the shared residents facilities and amenities.

Indeed, "residents services and amenities include a multi-purpose room, café / lounge, gym, kitchen servery, library study rooms and business centre. The spaces amount [to] 1,204 square metres and is largely provided at ground and first floor in Block 2", says one document, in which the developer outlined its plans.

Then, it says: "All residents will have access to the spaces."

Meanwhile, a concierge-type service for the building would be responsible "for achieving a sense of community within the scheme" and organising events in the amenity spaces, says the Estate and Common Area Property Management Strategy submitted as part of the plans.

"An example of the events organising in such a scheme with these facilities available would be movie screening nights for residents, wine/cheese tasting nights, book club evenings etc," says the strategy.

Marlet hasn't responded to queries sent yesterday by email, around restricted access to shared facilities.

The activities mentioned in the management strategy overlap with the kinds that the residents' association is trying to organise.

Hooper says that they want to run such events not just for the private tenants though but for everyone living there, as they do when they organise trips and events off-site.

"We're involving everybody," she says.

Ó Meachair says that residents are running out of options in trying to have a dialogue and work out a new arrangement. "The residents have tried everything at this point really. It might be the case that it has to be resolved with some kind of legal process."