Housing - Analysis and Findings
Open House Dublin is a city-wide celebration of Irish architecture, urban design, and the people who contribute to the building of Dublin. Open House Worldwide is focused on Housing and the People in 2022.
From a live register of fifty different housing projects for over twenty clients, Henry J Lyons currently has more than 24,000+ residential homes on the drawing boards. In this context and with the larger challenge of housing viability in Ireland, Henry J Lyons held a sequence of workshop with project architects working on housing.
Henry J Lyons are hosting an exhibition at our offices in 51-54 Pearse Street on Saturday 15th October on Housing, Finding opportunities for Making a Place a Home: An analysis of design and delivery across the RIAI Plan of Work. This exhibition is walk - in and open to the public.
Henry J Lyons and Housing
Analysis of the scale and status of housing output in October 2022 within Henry J Lyons.
Henry J Lyons has 24,000+ residential homes on the drawing boards in 2022. This offers a live laboratory of the pressures on housing delivery nationally and particularly in Dublin where most of projects are located.
Of the 10,155 units stuck in the planning system, 5,780 potential new homes are under Judicial Review where decisions by An Bord Pleanála are being challenged in the courts. This represents 24% of all live housing projects on their drawing boards
Having received planning permission, a further 9% or 2,270 residential homes have stalled due to a range of factors including construction inflation and more recently due to funding uncertainty due to upheaval in global economics.
The National Context
The challenge of delivering housing is so entangled that it prompts many questions. More funded research is required. With 43% or over forty percent is held up in planning system, and because of affordability pressures, we are curious to understand more as to why.
Many commentators have observed that housing delivery has changed so significantly since the 1970s that it puts the cost of a home further and further out of reach of the average earner.
This graphic explains one part of the complexity of a core societal issue. Over a generation and increase in average earnings diminishes in comparison to the national construction cost index and the cost of land. Construction Inflation reflects in part the fact we are building better homes. But as the Land Value increases more than other factors, it puts enormous pressure to build denser- i.e. more units per site (per hectacre).
In turn, densification occurs in pockets as land becomes available in an ad-hoc manner. This is a core challenge to the current planning process. Understandable, densification in such pockets leads to friction between neighbours and the planning system. This friction and resulting resistance is clearly manifested by Henry J Lyon’s representative statistics in planning delays, planning refusal, or since Bord Pleanála bypass in 2018 to Judicial Reviews.
In addition, we recognise the shortfall previously closed by credit (mortgages) does not close the growing gap and has altered the whole process of housing commissions and tenure.
To place these core issues and statistics prepared by Henry J Lyons within a larger context of housing delivery in Ireland in 2022, it raises more questions than we can answer. But here are some we’d be interested in prompting.
more about this?