With large losses last year, the Axis centre’s reserves will be gone by the middle of next year, says its voluntary chair Declan Dunne – unless something changes.
Some of the issues that councillors raised were site-specific, while others were much broader, focused on fears around the quality of developments that might follow.
Councillors are teasing out how to vote. Among the issues in play? A lack of clarity over the number of social homes proposed, a fear of really expensive rentals, and council funds.
Dublin City Council has decided not to go ahead with a proposal to sell property on Berkeley Street in the north inner-city to the Cabhru Housing Association Service (CHAS), a council spokesperson said on Tuesday.
Rather than creating 75 permanent social homes, there’s a chance developers will instead lease them to the council for 15 years, according to planning documents.
Councillors face a choice: to sell the land, perhaps, and use the money for much-needed community facilities. Or to keep the land, perhaps, for much-needed affordable or social homes.
Dublin councillors rejected a proposal from chief executive Owen Keegan to sell bundles of lands. But the plot sales will likely come again before the council, one by one.
At a busy meeting on Monday, Dublin city councillors drilled into how the council will fund big projects in the coming few years, voted not to rescind plans for O’Devaney Gardens, and more.
John Coleman’s diary shows meetings with a cast of players, from AHBs to developers such as Hines, Hibernia REIT, and Cairn Homes – all of which fall outside the scope of the Lobbying Act.
Some said they’d sought, and gotten, assurances that it wasn’t suitable for housing. Others questioned whether it could have been used for something else.
Councillors rezoned the site from industrial to residential based on a pitch for 350 homes. But a new plan would be much taller and denser than they expected.
Planning documents list the many amenities in planned shared-living developments. But those living there may have fewer rights than renters in traditional homes.
Dublin City Council is looking at rezoning lands for up to 20,000 new homes. But how’s it going to stop the cost of the land – and so the housing – from shooting up?
