Department’s counter-proposal for Oliver Bond flats has major flaws, residents and councillors say

Under the first phase of the regeneration of the Oliver Bond flats, the home where Carly Wosser lives in L Block was to be split.

Half was to be fused with one neighbouring flat to make that bigger, she said. The other half was to be added to the flat on the other side. 

“It was supposed to make, basically, three flats into two,” she said. “They were to move us out and we would get a chance to move back if we wanted.”

She was happy enough with that, she said. 

Her home, where she lives with her husband and daughters, is so small and damp – partly because of where one wall meets a long-blocked rubbish chute on the other side. 

The sitting room fits a couch and a telly, she said. “But there’s nowhere to have a table to sit down and eat.”

There are two bedrooms and a tiny bathroom. “It’s a small cubicle toilet, you wouldn’t want to be overweight,” she said. “In some flats, you can sit on the toilet and put your feet in the shower.”

Now though, that idea of knocking flats together – years in the works – seems to have been canned.

Earlier this week, residents learnt that the Department of Housing has batted back the council’s application to kick off the regeneration with changes to Blocks L, M and N – three of the 14 blocks in the flats.

“The department cannot support such a large reduction in homes during a housing crisis,” said a letter to the council. “The costs proposed do not represent value for money.”

Instead, the department put forward its own proposal for how the council and the community should go about the regeneration – which involves converting the two-bed homes into one-beds.

The department’s proposal is just about numbers of “units” on spreadsheets – not even the number of people in each home – and ignorant of the context and realities of the inner-city flats, say councillors and residents.  

They have been calling on the Minister for Housing, Fianna Fáil TD James Browne, to come and see the complex for himself.

“Does he want to do a house swap for a while?” said Gayle Cullen-Doyle, chair of the Oliver Bond Residents’ Group.

A spokesperson for the Department of Housing said that the minister had previously visited the flats “and is acutely aware of the need for work to be carried out”. 

They’re arranging a meeting next week with the regeneration forum, they said, to talk about the status of the project

Roll out the one-beds

The proposal submitted last December by Dublin City Council was for the first phase of the planned regeneration – involving three blocks where there are currently 74 homes, with 188 bed spaces. 

Under these plans, those would be knocked into 46 homes, with 144 bed spaces, said Green Party Councillor Michael Pidgeon.

So, a 38 percent reduction in the number of homes – but a smaller, 24 percent fall in bedspaces, he said. 

Council officials have been aware of concerns at the department around reductions in numbers of homes in regeneration projects, said Pidgeon.

But the council views these as necessary because the cramped flats just aren’t acceptable under modern housing standards, and such small sizes breed damp and mould, and they want to mix of homes too.

So, they had noted in their application a plan to build out a new site nearby on Bridgefoot Street, with 39 new homes – with an expected 123 bed spaces – to offset some of the losses.

If those were calculated in, it amounts to an increase in homes from 74 to 85, and an increase in bed spaces from 188 to 267, Pidgeon said.

In its response, though, the department suggested the council opt for a deep retrofit instead and fit the household size to the apartment size – for example by turning the two-beds into one-beds. 

That wouldn’t take away from the number of homes.

Larger households meanwhile, could be accommodated in the new Bridgefoot Street homes, it said, “and the rebuilding of the new blocks”. (It’s unclear what the last bit refers to.)

Labour Party Councillor Darragh Moriarty says the department’s proposal is unsustainable. “The shortsightedness of units, units, units,” he said. 

Yes, the council’s proposal may have fewer than currently, he said, but what you get back in terms of quality of life and quality of community far outweighs the quantity of bed spaces.

Creating so many studios and one-beds in the complex, as the department is proposing, wouldn’t be good, Moriarty said.

He said he frequently pushes back against rhetoric against one-bed apartments, when the opposition appears based on uglier arguments of “transience” or people not contributing to community.

But this isn’t that, he said. It is about a wider mix, with the forum all agreeing that the idea of concentrating lots of studios and one-beds in this complex is unsustainable, he said.

Ammar Ali, the Fianna Fáil councillor, said he too supports the council’s plans, based on his knowledge on the ground. 

He understands the department’s concern about “units” but this is needed, he said, with housing and flats for families as part of it. “A community has everyone in it.”

Pidgeon said that he too is often loudly banging the supply drum. “In some ways, I’m sympathetic to the thinking that it’s a housing crisis, we need more homes.” 

But he thinks that you have to look at the context, too. And in this case, the number of bed spaces as well as the number of homes. “I think the correct way to look at it is to have an awkward merging of the two.”

A closer look at the size of the homes means that there could indeed – if the department proposal were followed strictly across the entire complex, and the entire regeneration was done the same way – end up being just one-beds and studios. 

The vast majority of the homes in the Oliver Bond complex, an estimated 252 homes, are two-beds at 49.7sqm on average.

Meanwhile an estimated 128 are one-beds, which are mostly 39.1sqm save for a few which are 37.7sqm.  

There are seven three-beds, of which four are 59.9sqm and three are unclear. There are also four bedsits.

To meet modern standards under the city development plan, the two-beds would have to either be made bigger or become one-beds, and the one-beds would have to either be made bigger or become studios. 

The three beds at 59.9sqm wouldn’t meet the expected threshold for a two bed, either – so could become one-beds, also.

A spokesperson for the Department of Housing said that “the expectation or policy is not that there must be no loss of homes but that any necessary losses be minimised and adequately justified”.

Also about 80 percent of approved applicants on the council’s housing lists are currently single adults or couples, the spokesperson said, which shows the need for studios and one-bed homes.

A response to a media query on 22 April, through, was less circumspect. The department “will not support projects involving a reduction of the number of homes”, said a spokesperson, then. 

Wosser, who lives in L Block, pushed back at the idea that what is needed is studios and one-beds. “We actually think it’s ridiculous,” she said.

Couples form up and have kids and should be able to stay in their homes, she said.

There’s no point in studios as social homes unless people are just going to be bachelors for the rest of their lives, she said.

This wasn’t the promise

The Oliver Bond Regeneration Forum – made up of residents, council officials, councillors, and gardaí – had been working since September 2021 to come up with a proposal for how best to tackle the cramp, damp and mould.

Cullen-Doyle, the chair of the residents group, said she had really thought that the regeneration was finally going to happen. 

“I really really this time had faith,” she said on Thursday. She had been trying to bring sceptics along with her too, she said.

Much of her confidence stemmed from engagement with Darragh O’Brien, the Fianna Fáil TD and former housing minister, she said.

He had been down to the flats for a walkabout. Forum representatives have been into the Dáil twice, she said. “He said the money was there. We were having great discussions.”

Indeed, Dublin City Council wouldn’t have gotten this far along if there hadn’t been positive noises from the department on the general shape of its plans, said Moriarty, the Labour councillor.

Both he and Pidgeon, the Green Party councillor, said they thought there had been a change in policy at the department since Fianna Fáil TD James Browne became housing minister.

A spokesperson for the department disputed that. It hasn’t changed its policy or position, they said.

“The funding commitment remains in place,” they said. The council just needs to submit a revised proposal, they said.

At an entrance to the Oliver Bond flat complex on Thursday early afternoon though, all of the talk was of nixed regeneration plans and the let-down.

Sabrina Woods was showing neighbours photos of floor-to-ceiling damp, as her four-year-old son rolled his balance bike back and forth.

Damp in her small flat worsened when the new windows went in recently, she said. Some tenants had turned down the new windows, she said, saying they would wait for the full regeneration. 

She has battled leaks too, she says. “I had a leak in my house for seven years.”

It was only fixed once she was seven months pregnant with her second kid, and she warned the council that if anything happened to them. “It was coming down my sockets,” said Woods.

Jennifer Russell listens, sat on a ledge by black railings at the entrance, beside her mother, who still lives in the flats, too.

She lives over the road now in better conditions, she says – what others in the group teasingly call “Cleaner Close”. Still, she knows the flats well.

“Nobody is demanding one-bed flats around here,” she said. But as she sees it, the department wants quantity not quality, said Russell. 

Some families pay €300 a week for flats that you couldn’t swing a cat in, she said – and for the third time, a woman in the group suggests that a general rent strike is looking like a good choice right now.