Councillors urged to back 10% HMO cap
Concerned Residents Around Magee urges councillors to enshrine 10% cap in Local Development Plan
Derry and Strabane councillors are being urged to “do the right thing” and include a 10% cap on Houses in Multiple Occupation (HMOs) in their Local Development Plan (LDP).
Councillors are due to vote on the draft LDP, which has set the HMO cap at 30%, at June’s full council meeting on Wednesday.
Speaking to The Derry News, Mary Gallagher, who lives in Nicholson Terrace in the city and is a member of the campaign group
Concerned Residents Around Magee (CRAM), said if the councillors vote in the LDP at 30% “they are going to cause irreparable damage to parts of the city”.
“They are going to create a Holyland scenario that will be almost impossible to recover in five or six or seven years time. It will be too late,” she added.
“They have to fix it now. They can’t fix it down the line. They can’t wait for the Local Policies Plan (LPP). This is what we have been hearing - the LPP is somehow going to fix the problem.
“But, every other Council in the North of Ireland has taken between four and five years to produce their LPPs. So, are we going to wait four or five years to fix a problem they can stop on Wednesday by not adopting the LDP,” said Ms Gallagher.
Mary Gallagher said she did not think any of the councillors had intended this scenario to emerge.
“It is a mess and they have to fix it,” she added. “They have created a LDP which enshrines a 30% HMO threshold citywide. From what the councillors have told us previously, that was really never supposed to apply to residential areas, it was really meant for the city centre, and, at some point in the future, the LPP would come along and define where the residential areas are and they would zone HMO thresholds then.
“However, what councillors are going to vote on on Wednesday is an LDP which is at a 30% threshold citywide. It is going to take years for the LPP to come into force and to actually create the zoning and the 10% we are demanding.
“So, there is an interim period and we have already had saturation in some streets in the areas around Magee, which is escalating hugely and why CRAM was set up.
“CRAM was set up because we started to realise every house was being bought by a developer and lots of rentals were being converted into HMOs; rentals which might have been rented by families or a group of friends were being increasingly being converted into HMOs, with huge extensions on them - basically money generating machines for developers.
“Obviously the announcement of the expansion of the University has just accelerated that. It was like putting petrol on flames. It has absolutely accelerated this rush towards getting as many HMOs in as possible,” said Ms Gallagher.
The concerned resident said if Council adopts the LDP it will allow 30% HMOs citywide, which she described as “madness”.
“All of the research CRAM has carried out has established 10% is the tipping point at which communities are adversely affected by the percentage of HMO in any street,” she added.
“We have presented evidence to Council about this and we have had both Council planners and politicians saying, ‘we looked at those and those cities have brought it in afterwards’.
“CRAM would argue that actually reinforces out point. Cities which have recognised the dangers of HMOs have then enforced the 10% policy because they realise the decimation HMO saturation brings.
“It is the areas around Magee University which are obviously going to be the most adversely affected but we don’t think it is good for the entire city to be vulnerable to allowing this hge swell of HMO development.
“The problem is, they are completely relying on HMOs to solve the housing crisis and completely insufficient planning.
“We do not understand how the University - while we completely recognise it is a good thing for it to expand, Derry absolutely deserves it - can expand without making plans for student accommodation.
“It is completely putting the cart before the horse to announce the expansion of Magee, when the University of Ulster has not spent any money on developing any student housing at all. It is spending money in Belfast but it is not spending any in Derry.
“CRAM does not understand why that is not being discussed. And why the Council is somehow almost supporting that and is actually allowing this rampant HMO development.”