Fingal Briefs: Keeping tenants in-situ, affordable housing at St Ita’s, and battling coastal erosion

Keeping tenants in-situ

Fingal County Council needs to give landlords and tenants a reason why it isn’t purchasing properties under the tenant in-situ scheme, said Sinn Féin Councillor Ann Graves.

At the moment, tenants and landlords are getting a decision under the scheme sometimes days before a tenant’s deadline to move out, and without an explanation, said Graves in a motion put to the Balbriggan/Rush-Lusk/Swords Area Committee meeting on 9 May.

It is one of the most frustrating processes in the council at the moment, Graves said at the meeting.

“Initially, when the eviction ban was lifted, the tenant-in-situ scheme was seen as a lifeline for tenants that were likely to face eviction by their landlords,” she said.

Under the scheme, councils can buy homes when the tenant, who is eligible for social housing, faces eviction because a landlord intends to sell the property. There’s also a scheme for tenants who meet income rules for cost-rental homes.

Fingal County Council was fortunate that it had engaged a lot of landlords who wanted to look after their tenants while selling their properties, Graves said. “But the process hasn’t moved on since then.”

There are now cases in the Balbriggan/Rush-Lusk/Swords area where the process has been dragging on for months, and the council is failing to communicate with the landlord or tenant, she said.

“They’re falling into a situation where they’re at their deadline, or eviction date, and they have no feedback from Fingal County Council,” she says.

It is incentivising landlords to put properties onto the private market instead, she said. “And it’s happening in quite a number of cases.”

People on the scheme need answers quicker, she said. “I’m not saying every tenant is eligible. But let them know so they can move on and do whatever they need to do to ensure they’re not left as another number in the homeless figures.”

They do give the reasons, wrote two council officials in reply, Fiona Glynn, an administrative officer and Aoife Lawler, a senior executive officer in the council’s Housing Department.

They listed the issues that can block a deal. Among them: difficulties engaging with the landlord or negotiating a price, that the tenant doesn’t meet the eligibility criteria for social housing, or their needs are best met through existing social-housing stock.

In some cases, it can also be caused by the level of repairs needed to bring the property up to standard, the report said.

At the meeting, Lawler said the council has received more than 1,000 applications for the scheme.

Of those, 11 families were unsuitable because the property was overcrowded, and 16 were in houses that were under-occupied, Lawler said.

(Dublin City Council has taken a different approach, saying it would be flexible and buy homes with tenants under threat of eviction, even if they didn’t have the exact right number of rooms.)

Also, Fingal has refused 153 applications “on the basis of the tenant, or landlord”, she said.

That could be because the tenant is on the top of the social-housing list, she said. “It could be for antisocial reasons such as rent arrears, antisocial behaviour. It could be for previous convictions.”

Separate from that, 58 of the homes were deemed unsuitable, because the properties didn’t comply with building regulations or meet fire standards, she said.

Meanwhile, more than 250 homes have gone sale agreed, and 809 applications are going through the process, she said.

It is a long process, Lawler said. “It has been very challenging from both the landlord and the tenant point of view, but also for the housing staff.”

She will look at a way of informing tenants and landlords in the process, she said. “But to be honest, staff are just putting their heads down and working through it, and managing the surveys and the evaluations and the assessments, getting Garda vetting and all the other third party work that figures into this process.”

But when the council hasn’t been in touch with landlords or tenants, it is because they don’t have anything to communicate, she said.

Affordable housing in St Ita’s

Fingal County Council plans this year to carry out a new feasibility study with the Health Service Executive (HSE), to look at possible affordable housing on lands near St Ita’s Hospital in Portrane.

That’s according to a senior planner for the council, Róisín Burke, at the Balbriggan/Rush-Lusk/Swords Area Committee on 9 May.

Fianna Fáil Mayor Adrian Henchy had put forward a motion, asking that the council’s chief executive, AnneMarie Farrelly, take the lead in developing land next to the old Victorian psychiatric facility for affordable housing.

The lands, just north of the 175 acre campus and beside the refurbished cottages on Portrane Avenue, are zoned for homes.

Henchy’s motion was looking to build upon a previous feasibility study, carried out by the council and HSE from November 2013. That study examined the hospital’s grounds as a potential site for the now completed National Forensic Mental Health Service Hospital, which neighbours St. Ita’s on Portrane Demesne.

The only land bank suitable for the delivery of housing into the future is the site next to the hospital and by Seaview Park, which is owned by the HSE, Henchy said. “And that has been zoned [for housing] for many, many decades.”

Donabate’s population is growing and coastal erosion is limiting the delivery of housing nearby in the Burrow, Henchy said.

So, “I was anxious to try and see if we could at all progress, in the short and medium term, the delivery of some form of social and affordable housing on that landbank”, he said.

Someone else needs to take the lead though, he says, and the HSE can’t develop it. “Their mantra is to develop healthcare facilities.”

Social Democrats Councillor Paul Mulville supported the motion. There are a lot of empty buildings up on the campus too, which should be done up for subsidised housing for health care workers and allied staff, he said.

There needs to be some movement, Mulville said. “We know the new hospital in Portrane, the existing services, just can’t get staff partly due to the fact people just can’t afford to live in Dublin.”

Racing against coastal erosion

What was the status of proposals for permanent coastal protection measures in Portrane and Rush? asked Social Democrats Councillor Paul Mulville, also at the Balbriggan/Rush-Lusk/Swords Area Committee on 9 May.

Mulville asked Farrelly, the council’s chief executive, to provide an update on the An Bord Pleanála planning application needed to carry out permanent coastal protection measures in the two seaside towns.

Both Portrane and Rush have areas that are at imminent risk of coastal erosion and flooding, his motion said.

Since 2018, Portrane Beach has used reinforced concrete blocks to try to stem erosion. But those are only an interim measure, Mulville said back in October.

RPS Planning Consultants was commissioned by Fingal County Council to carry out a coastal erosion risk assessment in July 2019, and proposed a dune-management system and sea groynes – structures built perpendicular to the shoreline, for trapping sediments – to protect the coastline in Portrane.

What Mulville now wanted, in his motion, was to find out if the consultants had completed their environmental and technical reports.

Senior Parks and Landscapes Officer Kevin Halpenny said in his report on the motion that recent storm activity and high spring tides have led to significant erosion along the coastline at Burrow Beach.

It had also increased the vulnerability of homes in the Burrow as well as the Rogerstown Outer Estuary, Halpenny’s report said. “These recent events highlight the need to urgently progress appropriate long-term “solutions to coastal change in this area”.

RPS Engineering has prepared a Coastal Flooding Erosion Risk Management Project for the council. That would mean fishtail groynes on the east side of the Burrow Peninsula with sea walls and embankments on the west, Halpenny’s report said.

But it requires maritime area consent – the first step in the planning process for marine areas – from the Maritime Area Regulatory Authority (MARA), the report said. Once MARA provided consent, the project application could be lodged with An Bord Pleanála

Fianna Fáil Mayor Adrian Henchy supported the motion. He asked if there were any interim measures going in to help homeowners at risk.

Halpenny, at the meeting, said the focus is on achieving maritime area consent. “Notwithstanding that we are looking at what, if any, additional interim measures might be possible.”

But, Halpenny said, he couldn’t provide details of any interim measures at the meeting.