Should developers be obliged to provide 5% for community and cultural spaces?

Brendan Burgess

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Dublin City Council requires developers to provide 5% of any development over 10,000 sq m for cultural and community spaces.

I am a big supporter of the arts and it's great to see artists' studios being provided.

But is it really fair to impose this cost on the buyers of new homes?

Yes, we need more cultural and community spaces, but let the local authorities or national government provide them.

Don't add yet another cost to the buyers of new homes. They are already paying for social housing, development levies and VAT.
 
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Surely these are facilities that will directly benefit the owners of the homes concerned? Obviously a home in a precinct that boasts arts, cultural and community facilities is worth more than a home in a precinct that's basically a dormitory, that you have to leave in order to do anything. Why should the taxpayers pay to enhance the value of their homes in this way?
 
Cultural and community spaces suggests something intended for use not just by those in the development itself. It's not clear if these spaces are intended to serve the wider local community or access is restricted only to those in the development.

Also, I'm doubtful as to how many > 10,000 developments in Dublin City there are, so would be swamped in the overall scheme of things.
If we were talking about a whole new housing estate, I think it would be reasonable that the developer and council work together around green spaces, facilities, services etc.

But this seems very nebulous.

This article from Dublin Inquirer gives a good summary of it:

The main problem recounted by developers was that in an economic model where 100 percent of the site must make a return on the investment, how would that five percent work? Yeates said on Friday.
“And it isn’t just for arts organisations, but it’s for creative and community and cultural organisations,” he said. “And when they take up that five percent, will they be able to pay on site?”
Feelings, however, slowly thawed. Some developers have since used the developer toolkit created by the Arts Office to guide them through the process, he said at the February meeting.
Since November, the position of developers towards the scheme has become more mixed, he said. No longer uniformly against.
But, Yeates stressed, one of the issues that remains is that the council isn’t responsible for implementing the policy. That is the responsibility of the developers, he said. This has led to the delivery of spaces that developers earmark for performances and exhibitions, or artist studios, but which are only used on a handful of occasions or left entirely empty.

With “5% policy”, council seeks to increase community and cultural spaces in the city - Dublin Inquirer

“We’ve gone from the concept and theory in the previous council term to trying to embed this, and implement it.”
www.dublininquirer.com
 
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I remember a few years ago a local council boss in my own area justifying the imposition of development levies on purchasers of newly built homes, by stressing that the council needed this money to organise festivals.

These are deeply unserious people.
 
TomEdison said:
Why should the taxpayers pay to enhance the value of their homes in this way?
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Just to be clear, I am not suggesting that the taxpayer should fund the building of arts spaces in a development. They should just fund the provision of arts spaces generally.

If a developer believes that providing artists' studios or other community spaces enhances their development, then let them provide them at their own expense. But they should not be obliged to provide them.
 
odyssey06 said:
Cultural and community spaces suggests something intended for use not just by those in the development itself.
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I would imagine that the artists' studios would not be used by the buyers of apartments as most artists couldn't afford them. But maybe they would get one of the social houses in the development.

Requiring communal space is probably ok - as distinct from community space. Communal space meaning space used by the residents of the complex and community space being space used by anyone in the locality.
 
odyssey06 said:
Cultural and community spaces suggests something intended for use not just by those in the development itself. It's not clear if these spaces are intended to serve the wider local community or access is restricted only to those in the development.
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The former, I think. But in a neighbourhood that has facilities of this kind, the value of private residences is enhanced; this is a more attractive neighbourhood.

Brendan Burgess said:
Sorry, I have edited the original post to say 10,000 sq metres.

What is the average size of an apartment? About 70 sq metres.

So a development of 140 to 150 apartments.
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The requirement applies to "large scale developments above 10,000 sq. m. in total area". It's not clear to me whether this is total floor area, or total land area. That makes a big difference to how this requirement impacts in practice!
 
That attitude is fairly typical unfortunately. People support the thing in principal but are against the implementation/introduction of the thing in this specific way and using this specific method of financing. So the thing generally doesn't happen.

It's not clear how the 5% policy operates in practice, but it seems to me that the purpose should be determined in consultation with the local authority as part of the planning process— so that the area doesn't end up with 50 community centres and zero creches for example— and the cost (before fitting out and not including a profit margin) should be wholly deductible so that it ends up being paid by the state in some way shape or form, with ownership (or long lease) also reverting to the State.

If the housing market were operating like in 2006 I'd take a much more militant attitude of making the developer pay for absolutely everything as a price to pay for the privilege of accessing supernormal profits. In today's market, all direct & indirect charges levied by the state (including utilities connection fees) and taxes on residential construction should be eliminated for the next decade and anything the State or local government wants in a development they should pay for in its entirety.

The same question should be asked of footpaths, cycle lanes, public transport, tree planting, flower planters, street cleaning, sports facilities, theatres, and a ton of other amenities which are provided at the taxpayers expense. Including schools and universities. Why should the taxpayer pay for enhancements which boost the value of other people's homes?

The answer is of course that the homeowners taxpayers too. There are few if any people in this country who live so far off the grid that they can avoid paying taxes of some sort. And the deeper answer is that making things better for a community which happens to be 50km away from me in any direction makes things better in my community too because (newsflash) people move around and it's far better for me and everyone in my town if they're coming to my town to visit or perform in our theatre (funded by the taxpayer FYI) than to rob our cars. And yeah, I've a taxpayer funded theatre within walking distance and I've also had my car robbed by toerags from a particular part of Dublin which is basically a sea of council houses and little else and has been defecated by all branches of government on since it was built around 4 decades ago. While I wish nothing but ill on those scummers I also believe a ton of money should be spent providing real amenities in that area to mitigate the risk of the same thing happening in a few years by the kids living there who are currently 5 or 10 years younger.

I'm suggesting exactly this. Integration is necessary, and community spaces should within the community not elsewhere. And the market manifestly does not provide for anything close to all the requirements of a modern society.

Aside from anything else it'll be far cheaper and faster to get them in at the start of a large integrated project than for the national or local government to try and build them later on their own.
 
Bear in mind that one example of a cultural space in the DCC development plan (chapter 12) is a nightclub...

Development Plan 2022 - 2028

The Dublin City Development Plan 2022-2028 sets out policies and objectives to guide how and where development will take place in the city over the lifetime of the Plan.
www.dublincity.ie
They also mention pubs elsewhere but it's not clear if they are specifically referring to "historical" ones or if a pub in a new development would fit the bill as a cultural space.
 
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Well, that's partly answered by development levies, which are imposed to part-fund the provision of infrastructure that serves new devlopments and so enhances property values in those developments.
BIG-notorious said:
The answer is of course that the homeowners taxpayers too. There are few if any people in this country who live so far off the grid that they can avoid paying taxes of some sort.
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Sure. But the taxpayers who own homes beside the new railway station (or whatever) receive a substantial financial benefit from the station that the generality of taxpayers do not receive. Granted that the station has to be paid for, who exactly should pay for it? There's an obvious equity argument that those who receives a substantial direct benefit from some public facility should pay a bit more towards that facility than a those who lives at the other end of the country, who benefits only indirectly, and to a smaller degree. And property-owners whose property values will be enhanced by the facility are a textbook example of selective private benefit conferred by public spending.
 
The trouble is that these cultural spaces should be provided by the government or council, not foisted onto the builders. They are required as part of, you know, living. The problem is that the government/council funding are all struggling so these things are very far down any priority list.
 
The problem with this logic is that the main beneficiaries of infrastructural enhancements will be those who already own property locally, the majority of whom who will never be asked to contribute a cent even as the value of their properties rise once the infrastructural enhancements take effect.
 
Indeed.

Unless, of course, we introduce a serious value-based annual property tax. That would automatically capture the contribution to property values resulting from publicly-funded services, facilities and infrastructure, and it would apply equally to properties existing at the time some facility is provided, and properties constructed afterwards.
 
As good a way as any of hammering affordability for young and heavily mortgaged homeowning families.

At least it will keep out the riff raff.
 
Seeing how some apartment complex's are treated in terms of antisocial behaviour, I think this is a massive waste of money.
I can't see the spaces being respected. That's from my lived experience of being in a complex situated in the middle of a town centre (Ashbourne)
 
T McGibney said:
As good a way as any of hammering affordability for young and heavily mortgaged homeowning families.
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Quite the opposite. Property values are inflated by the fact that they are subsidised by taxpayer-funded services and facilities; when you buy a property you are also buying the benefit of services and facilities that will be provided to your property at no cost or below cos into the future; the price you pay for the property will reflect the present value of those services and facilities. A property which carried a liablity to pay for these services and facilities as they were supplied would sell for less to begin with. Propety values would go down and the annual cost of owning a property would rise. In a perfect market (yes, I know, I know) this would be a wash; the overall cost of property ownership would be unchanged, but it would be less heavily front-loaded than at present. So it would be easier, not harder, for younger people to become property owners.
 
It very much depends on the location. There are lovely communal spaces in Rathgar at the Marianella development which are not a magnet for antisocial behaviour. It all depends on how well behaved the locals are.
 
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