GOVERNMENT PLANS TO allow homeowners to let modular ‘garden homes’ on the private rental market have been described as “scraping the bottom of the barrel” in terms of finding a solution to the housing crisis.

In a withering assessment on this week’s The Explainer podcast, Robin Mandal – former president of the Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland – warned that they may turn out to be “exploitative” for renters while also creating more work for planners due to complaints.

Under the proposals, homeowners could build habitable units of up to 45 sq metres in their back gardens without planning permission, and to rent them out under the Rent-a-Room scheme for a maximum of €14,000 a year free of tax.

They will only be allowed forgardens that still have 25 square metres of space remaining after the cabin is built. The homeowner must also be living in the main dwelling and a separate entrances to the overall property will also be required.

The government hopes the move will ease the housing crisis, but Mandal warned it could create a wave of unregulated rentals that only cause further problems.

“I think it is open to abuse,” Mandal told host Laura Byrne, “Once you deregulate something it is open to abuse.”

Mandal – who is also vice chair of the Dublin Democratic Planning Alliance – said he believes the government is driven by the idea that “anything which eases or provides any more accommodation will help” amidst a housing crisis that has left 17,517 people in emergency accommodation.

But he added:

I think that is scraping the bottom of the barrel. Once you’re at that level of trying to solve a very serious intergenerational crisis you’ve lost the run of yourself.

When the change was first flagged last year, the government stated that it could enable both younger and older generations to live close to family, but also “independently of the family home in the short-term”.

However, last month, the government said it was now proposing that the units can be rented to anyone.

Mandal added that they may create a “two-tier society” as the person living in the garden shed will have to go down the sideway and have no sense of a community”, in contrast to the homeowner.

“It’s discomforting and may lead to poor outcomes,” Mandal said.

While calling the cabins ‘modular homes’ gives the impression they are of high quality, Mandal continued, “the rules don’t say that it doesn’t have to be shoddy, so you could just convert a garden shed into a habitable space. You could self-build”.

The architect said he has heard a number of complaints due to existing garden modular units, where clients have complained of cabins that are causing a problem in local neighbourhoods.

The government believes the dropping of planning permission will allow planners more time to focus on larger projects, but Mandal said the proposal may have the reverse effect.

This could be due to people “bending the rules” and trying to build larger units than is legal, leading to an increase in the workload of planners, Mandal said.

You can listen to the full podcast here.