“Cost-Rental Housing” as coined by the Irish Government, describes a new project funding scheme, based in part upon the way the City of Vienna funds its extremely successful social housing.
Cost-rental housing involves a government commitment to partially fund the project with long-term low-interest loans to produce two affordable housing types, both of which require rents to be held below market rate. The scheme is part of Ireland’s commitment to the construction of much more social housing over the next few years
Mixed income projects like this in a number of countries have involved public-private partnerships (PPPs) with some government funding to private developers in ways such as planning approvals or gifts of land. This mature funding scheme has, over the past couple of decades, delivered disappointing handfuls of public housing, with the lion’s share offered for sale at market rates.
70% of Dublin’s Cost Rental initiative combines rental housing planned to be affordable for lower middle-class citizens who may never earn enough to buy their own home. The other 30% — a much healthier slice of the pie than most PPP projects — will be social housing.
Read more about this concept and project in the Irish Times: Plans to be submitted for Dublin city’s first cost-rental scheme
For a look in more detail at this Irish plan, read more in Lexology: New Cost Rental Equity Loan Scheme.1 And for those with a broader interest in ways of funding public/social housing, try Financing Social Housing.
