Sites in Limerick identified for modular housing

ALMOST 20 sites in the city centre have been identified to build temporary modular homes on, to help ease the housing crisis, Mayor John Moran has said.

It comes as he sets aside €1.3m of his mayoral fund to deliver the measure.

One of the flagship policies of his programme, the mayor hopes people on the housing waiting lists can move into these modular units while they wait for their permanent home to be completed.

As permanent homes are completed, other housing list tenants will move into modular units.

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Mayor Moran acknowledged €1.3m will not really make a huge difference, saying: “Several billion will be needed for this”.
Some €300,000 of the €1.3m allocated to this will be done on feasibility studies in a bid to persuade the Government how this new approach can work and attract outside investment.

The other €1m is there to launch planning applications on both private and public land.

Also, he wants to bring in a number of ‘showhome’ type modular housing to give would-be tenants ideas on how the homes could appear -and what the public want to see.

This would then inform what type of modular homes should be bought.

“It's to push us further and faster,” Mayor Moran told a briefing.

“This for me is one of the most transformational things we can do this year. We have identified 17 or 18 sites. They are going through a site analysis at the moment,” he added.

Mayor Moran did not identify the specific sites, but said: “You can assume they are all in the city centre.”

He namechecked Toppin’s Field on the southside and Moyross on the northside.

The Department of Housing has a team working on this policy, the mayor added.

“The city needs to expand significantly. We want people living in the city centre, but it could take five to 10 years when you look at how long it takes to build out some of the apartments that the Land Development Agency and others are doing. This is an effort to bridge that gap,” said Mayor Moran.

The Land Development Agency is a commercial, State-sponsored body that has been created to coordinate land within public control for more optimal uses where appropriate, with a focus on the provision of housing.

“To fund all of this will take several billion. But in the scheme of all the Government has to do, it is manageable. What I hope we will have done (a year from now) is got public buy-in to the prototypes and the examples, we'll know the sites we will be able to do something on, and maybe even get to a planning process on a pilot site,” Mayor Moran added.

He praised Government for what he sees now as an “openness” to look at the possibility of modular homes.

The study on the modular homes in Limerick which the first citizen hopes to use some of the €300,000 allocation for will identify how many times these modular units can be used, where they will be able to be moved.

On top of this, it will also give information on the sell-on value of them, should other counties follow Limerick's lead.