ALONE express disappointment in Minister Alan Kelly’s decision to build apartments smaller than the current minimum size
“Our older people don’t want to go back to bedsit living”
ALONE express disappoint over Minister Alan Kelly’s decision to allow studio apartments
22nd December 2015, Dublin ALONE have today expressed disappointment over Minister Alan Kelly’s decision to allow developers to build studio apartments up to 27% smaller than the current minimum apartment size.
CEO of ALONE, Sean Moynihan said, “We see this as a backward step for the housing market, we in ALONE, along with many other organisations spent years campaigning for the abolition of bedsits. The standard of housing needs to be improved not diminished.”
Moynihan continued, “We would be concerned that it will be our older persons who end up in living in these tiny studio apartments, as happened recently when Dublin City Council reopened 300 bedsits. Studies have shown us that older persons spend more time in their home than any other demographic; the average 80 year old will spend 80% of their day at home. They need a space that they can live in – not somewhere to just exist.”
Moynihan concluded, “ALONE was founded almost 40 years ago to tackle the housing situation for older persons, today we face more problems than ever, 50% of all calls we receive are related to housing. We have an ageing demographic and we need to make positive, sustainable plans for the future to ensure that older people are not going got be left surviving in substandard accommodation. We believe that the Minister’s energy would be better focussed on simplifying the process for developing social housing rather than reducing the standards to make things easier for developers. There should also be an increased focus on ensuring the Social Housing Strategy targets are met, as we believe they are currently way off target.“