A note on the Pre-63 Debate

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Are Bedsits Gone Forever?

There seems to be a lot of panic in landlord, tenant and journalistic circles about the new rules for basic minimum standards of accommodation. I’ll be honest, I don’t get it.

Take this article in The Independent for instance:

 

UP to 1,000 pre-1963 rental properties worth an estimated €500m are in danger of being shut down next year because the owners say they cannot comply with new legislative changes demanded by the Government. . .

 

The IPOA believes that the majority of pre-63 owners, whose buildings hold around 6,000 tenants, have been thus far unable to comply and won’t manage it by the deadline.

The main obstacle it says, is negative equity, which is preventing those who cannot afford to make the costly renovations from selling their properties to someone who can actually afford to undertake the work.

Almost all properties bought since 2002 are now in negative equity.

 

Well first off, the IPOA are talking about 6000 tenants, but the 2006 census found there were 14,480 tenants living in bedsit accommodation. That already tells you how much of a change has taken place. We’re talking 4-5000 rental units in a rental market of about 200,000 rental units (2%) and a country that has hundreds of thousands of empty properties.

But more importantly, think about what the new regulations actually mean. These are the minimum standards of accommodation as laid out by the act:

  • Ensure that the house is in a proper state of structural repair. This means that it must be essentially sound with roof, floors, ceilings, walls and stairs in good repair and not subject to serious dampness or rotting. The new Regulations strengthen this requirement with effect from 1 December 2009 (see below)
  • Provide a sink with hot and cold water
  • Provide a separate ventilated room with a bath or shower and toilet
  • Provide heating appliances for every room lived in
  • Provide facilities for cooking and for the hygienic storage of food, for example, a 4 ring hob with oven and grill, fridge-freezer and microwave oven
  • Provide clothes washing facilities
  • Provide clothes drying facilities if there isn’t a garden or a yard
  • Ensure that electricity or gas supplies are in good repair and safe
  • Ensure that every room has adequate ventilation and both natural and artificial lighting
  • Provide a fire blanket and fire alarms
  • Provide access to vermin-proof and pest-proof refuse storage facilities.

Let’s face it, what we’re talking about is your own bathroom, cooking facilities, a washing machine, a clothes rack and a few electric heaters. Even the not so charming bedsit I’ve shown in the picture in the top left probably meets these basic minimum standards. It’s this one by the way, Longwood Avenue, South Circular Road, Dublin 8. There’s a bathroom, there’s an electric radiator visible, there’s central heating, there’s (presumably) hot and cold running water. There’s a fridge, a sink, presumably a cooker. The washing machine might stump them, but as far as I know “laundry facilities” somewhere in the building will cover that.

Oh and a decent bin.

There are dozens of other, equally crummy flats, that will meet the new regulations. Unfortunately the new regs say nothing about minimum size, the wallpaper or furniture.

 

13 McBride Avenue, Mervue, Co. Galway

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13 McBride Avenue, Mervue, Co. Galway

13 McBride Avenue, Mervue, Co. Galway

13 McBride Avenue, Mervue, Co. Galway is up for sale, by auction, with O’Donnellan and Joyce in Galway. Advised minimum value, E100k. Surprisingly, or maybe unsurprisingly, that seems to be almost as low as it goes in Galway. To my eye, this house looks like it was inherited in the late ’90s and used as a student let thereafter.

Outside, the porch looks rickety. The neighbours have changed theirs, and it’s right on the property line, which limits what can be done with the porch on this one. Otherwise the front of the house looks relatively ok. Windows and roof seem fine, though I can see that a few of the neighbours have changed their windows, and this style/age of house isn’t known for its insulation value so there’s probably a bit of ugrading to be done there. The garden is overgrown, and the plants up the sidewall would need to be taken care of.

The sitting room carpet is pretty spectacular, but it’s also removable. No visible cracks or peeling wallpaper. I see no plugs or radiator in the room though. The photos give me no feel for the downstairs layout. The sitting room is at the front, the dining area is at the back. What’s with those two lights on the wall in the dining area? Seems very strange, both in location and fitting style, was it used as a bedroom? Is that door off the lino area into the kitchen? Is the dining area/kitchen an extension out the back. I’m assuming that the unit in the old chimmney breast is the central heating.

Upstairs none of the three bedrooms seems to have a double bed, but it looks like two of them are big enough. The bathroom makes me cry.

Let’s see, overall, a decent site with possibilities to extend. The house might be in good nick, that’s not much use when you have a tiny kitchen, a messy downstairs layout and a probable need to rejig upstairs. E100k seems a little steep.

Michael McDaniel’s “Reaction Housing System”

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I really want to love this. I do. It’s clever, it’s necessary, it’s cheap, it should work.

But I don’t, I hate it. I think I’ve been hanging around with architects too long. I look at the Reaction Housing System and I wonder where the people are. Really, four people living in that space? Four people from any country in the world, but most of all four people from the US?

The talk almost gets there. Almost. There’s a passing mention of connecting them to each other, putting bathrooms in, using some as an office, that they’re easy to hook up to electricity, but it’s a passing mention.

First they cannot house a family of four, not for longer than one night, or maybe in a real disaster situation a week. Even in third world countries, four people housed on two sets of bunks is not a popular living space. Couples want double beds, parents don’t want their children on the top bunk, people everywhere want a tiny bit of privacy, even if it’s just a curtain. They also want to be able to store cooking equipment, food, a change of clothes, water . . .

As it stands these pods suffer from the “segway problem”. The segway was an improvement over the bicycle, but it wasn’t enough of an improvement to justify a technology shift for everyday users. At the moment, these are an improvement over basic huts, tents or putting everyone in a school hall, but they’re not enough of an improvement to justify the technology shift.

They do have potential though. The idea is almost there, but for the love of God, please put the people back in. Give me a timeline. Day one, shipment one, there are four people in every pod. End of week one, another shipment, every family of four gets an extra pod connected to the back. The parents sleep in the back, the children sleep in the front, and during the day the front becomes a sitting room, maybe there’s an awning out front, which provides shelter when people are cooking.

After a month, maybe half the people in the camp have managed to make alternative arrangements. Their old pods are redistributed, and retooled. Every family of four now has two bedrooms, a sitting room pod, a kitchen pod and a bathroom pod. The camp is set up with “houses” in circles, in streets, in cul de sacs. Then show me that the site where these people used to live has been cleared and they simply move back there, taking their pods with them and using them as shelter while their house is rebuilt.

Oh and for the love of all that is good in this world, please don’t show me a grey house. Paint them yellow, or white, or red, or green. Anything but grey.

Marella Holiday Village, Enniscrone, Bartragh, Co. Sligo

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Marella Holiday Village, Bartrah, Enniscrone, Co. Sligo

Marella Holiday Village, Bartrah, Enniscrone, Co. Sligo

What an ugly house, that’s my first thought. I’m not sure if I have much else, but seriously, what an ugly house. Or rather houses, since Lot 6, Lot 66 and Lot 85 are almost identical. Four bedrooms, detached, used to be on sale for E270,000.

I’ve been to Enniscrone, I happen to like it, it’s the only place in Ireland I can remember the sea being vaguely warm, but it is massively overbuilt. I really wish there was more to say, but there’s not. I can’t find a single photo that shows the inside of these houses anywhere. Outside, they’re ugly and look like they haven’t been looked after in a few years or longer. Are they worth even the reserve price? I don’t know. I guess if you really, really want a house down there maybe, but these are so singularly charmless that I’m not sure I could bring myself to.

Maybe if I went to visit them I’d change my mind.

14 Gilford Road, Sandymount

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14 Gilford Road, Sandymount, Dublin 4

14 Gilford Road, Sandymount, Dublin 4

This house has potential. It’s a word that makes me shudder because in reality in means gutting the house and spending three times as much as you planned over twice as long as you planned to get a house that looks like the one you have in your head. Still though, this house has potential.

The side of the house is odd, the way the front door looks like it’s in a lean to and the bare grey wall crying out for painting. I’m not sure about the windows, and there’s something funny going on in the corner between the bay window and the rest of the house at roof level. Street view reveals a garage to the side, and what looks like an awkward extension. 1507sqft is tight for a four bedroom, especially a four bed in this area. It’s more like an overgrown three bed, but if it’s well laid out inside it might be ok.

Inside there’s a radiator in the hall, so central heating has clearly been installed at some stage, but every fireplace is blocked by an ugly electric unit. What matters is that the fire places are still there though. Hidden as they are under layers of paint. Stripping them won’t be fun, but is probably possible. The other features like the folding doors in the sitting room and the bannisters are also lovely.

The light is good at the front of the house, but I’m not sure which way the house actually faces. The photos of the back garden show it as very dark, but if the house is East/West you may be ok for parts of the day. No photos of the bathroom or the kitchen and I don’t see many plugs dotted about the place. I also have questions over the garage, the extension out the back, and the overall internal layout of the house. Wonder what the planners would say about changing those around.

It needs gutting, it needs reorganising, but there is scope there. In short it has potential.