Tipperary council to submit to minister another list of proposals to tackle housing crisis

Tipperary County Council will this week send a letter to Housing Minister setting out another shopping list of measures it wants the Government to introduce to tackle the housing crisis in the wake of a marathon special meeting of councillors sparked by the end of the eviction ban.

The council’s action plan, ranging from proposed incentives to encourage developers to build new private housing estates to supports to entice landlords to stay in the private rental market, was agreed in a private committee session of the elected council in Clonmel.

The council went into committee after more than two and a half hours of presentations by housing officials and debate by elected members at the specially meeting in County Hall in Clonmel last Wednesday, March 29.

The list of proposals hasn’t been made public yet as the draft letter outlining them is only going before the council’s Corporate Policy Group today (Wednesday, April 5) for approval before being submitted to Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien.

The council meeting was convened at the request of five councillors – Sinn Féin’s Cllr David Dunne and Tony Black, Mayor of Clonmel Cllr Pat English of the Workers & Unemployment Action Group, Independent Cllr Annemarie Ryan and Independent Cllr Seamus Morris. They were t concerned the end of the eviction ban last Friday will lead to a surge in local people and families becoming homeless.

While the council’s July meeting last year was mostly dedicated to the housing crisis and concluded with the submission of a list of proposed measures it submitted to the Government, this was the first special meeting in the council's history to be convened at the request of a number of elected members.

Cora Morrissey of the Council’s Housing Section gave a presentation outlining that the council has access to 130 emergency accommodation beds in B&Bs, Own Front Door housing units and transitional units like Matthew Burke House run by the Thurles Lions Trust in Thurles.

The meeting heard there are currently five families and 13 single people living in emergency accommodation since January.
And the council is dealing with 46 cases where people on social housing supports have received notices to quit the private rental properties they live in.

Thirteen of the notices to quit expire in April and 12 expire in May with the remainder spread over the coming months up to December.

Council’s Director of Housing Sinead Carr said the council currently has “more than enough” emergency accommodation in place to cater for the number of notices to quit case they are currently dealing. She pointed out it was hoped that not all these families and individuals will end up needing emergency accommodation.

Council CEO Joe MacGrath assured councillors the local authority was leaving “no stone unturned” in its efforts to develop new housing schemes. When Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien visited the county in February to officially open new housing schemes, council officials took the opportunity to appraise him of the housing situation in Tipperary.

He described the level of engagement and support the council has received from the Minister as “exceptional” .

He confirmed to Cllr Kieran Bourke he said resources are being made available to the council when it looked for them from the Housing Department.

Mr MacGrath said Tipperary County Council was currently the largest builder of houses in the county by a “considerable distance”.

It was either planning to build, in the process of building or has built almost 1,000 housing units. Over the period of the Housing for All 2022-2026 programme, he said the council will exceed the initial target set by the Government of building 887 social housing units by instead building 1,125 housing units, which represents a 27% increase.

He reminded councillors that the local authority was “fully utilising” the Government initiative to purchase privately owned houses where tenants on HAP and RAS social housing supports were issued with notices to quit and couldn’t find alternative accommodation.

Mr MacGrath pointed out that while the public house building programme has never been as active and widespread in this county, there was a disappointing lack of private house building even in the bigger towns.

The council was seeking to address this with the Department (of Housing) and private housing agencies. This challenging situation was primarily due to the global economic downturn that stopped house building for nearly 10 years.

Ms Carr reminded councillors that in response to the surge in people presenting as homeless last year , the council changed its structures at that time to address the problem.

HAP and RAS tenants were now advised to contact the council after they were issued with a notice to quit rather than at the end of the six months period. The council worked with them over that six months to find alternative accommodation. If it was not possible to source new accommodation, the council tried to purchase the house the tenants were living in under the Tenant In-Situ scheme.

Ms Carr noted that after Dublin City Council and Louth County Council, Tipperary council purchased the most housing units under this scheme since it was introduced last year.

With these measures, the council’s homeless team has turned around a difficult situation to a more manageable situation.

She believed the impact of the lifting of the eviction ban on April 1 will be different to last summer as the issuing of notices to quit will be staggered and the council has solutions in place to deal with those presenting as homeless.

Tipperary Town Cllr Annemarie Ryan said she put her name to the request to convene the meeting because there was “real fear and panic” on the ground from people facing notices to quit and those who were “couch surfing”. She checked the Daft.ie website before the meeting and there were just 11 homes available to rent on it countrywide and just one was in Tipperary.

She proposed a number of measures to council management to increase social housing supply in the county.

To speed up the delivery of vacant council homes for re-letting, she proposed the council just carry out basic remedial works sufficient to allow new tenants move in and complete the renovations at a later date.

She also proposed the council CPO vacant and derelict properties to turn into housing and cited the example of Limerick City and County Council which has purchased 174 properties through CPO.

“It’s very disheartening to see vacant properties across the county, never more so than now,” she said urging council management to consult with councillors who have local knowledge of where vacant properties are in their communities.

She also proposed the council CPO properties that are in receivership.

Mayor of Clonmel Cllr Pat English said he was dealing with families, single people and people with longterm illness who are now facing eviction.

“Most will be forced to move into family and friends homes and some may have to emigrate. Others will find themselves homeless.”

He said the council must ensure no person faces spending a night in a garda station because they have become homeless.

Sinn Féin’s Cllr David Dunne, who is Cathaoirleach of Carrick Municipal District, called once again for a moratorium on enforcement action being taken against people living in mobile homes or cabins and supported the hiring of more council housing maintenance staff to work on renovating vacant social housing to enable them to be re-let faster.

Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael councillors, meanwhile, defended the Government’s decision to end the eviction ban.

Cllrs Siobhán Ambrose (FF) and Marie Murphy (FG) stressed the eviction ban was only a short term measure for the winter months.

Cllr Murphy noted that even the housing charities had been divided on whether it should be extended.

She highlighted there was concern that extending the eviction ban could have a long term impact of more small landlords leaving the private rental market at a time when there was a need to encourage more property owners into the rental market.

Party colleague Cllr John Fitzgerald, meanwhile, didn’t believe the private rental system can function properly with this eviction moratorium in place .

And he didn’t believe lifting the ban will result in a “wave of homelessness”.

He expressed concern that landlords in the private rental market were being portrayed as the “baddies” and it was time they were “cut a bit of slack”. Many were “accidental” landlords, some of whom had to leave the country and rent out their homes in Ireland.

They needed to be incentivised to stay in the rental market and new people needed to be encouraged into it the sector rather than the flow of business being hampered.

Carrick Cllr Kieran Bourke told the meeting he received phone calls from four different property owners welcoming the lifting of the eviction ban. They could now “offload” their properties as their financial situation was not good.

He also highlighted the difficulty developers were having securing funding to build housing estates.

He estimated 90% of new private housing developments were being bought up for social housing as developers and builders don’t have the means to develop them and sell them off privately.

Mr MacGrath responded that he had met with developers and the Construction Industry Federation to try and get developments off the ground.

Responding to Cllr Ryan’s proposals, Ms Carr said moving in new tenants before all renovations on vacant council homes are complete, would lead to a significant increase in maintenance calls to the council.

She argued it was better value for money to complete the renovations before re-letting it to new tenants.

She said she would look at the turn over time for re-letting void houses to new tenants.

Ms Carr pointed out the council has reduced its house vacancy rate from 4.7% of its housing stock in 2020 to 1.8% of its housing stock at the moment. This was a very significant improvement.

In relation to the CPO proposal, she said the council will certainly purchase properties and was looking at how it can restructure to more actively take on the compulsory purchase of properties, particularly in town centres. She noted that only 13 of the properties Limerick council compulsory purchased were turned into housing units.

Ms Carr was not for moving on Cllr Dunne’s renewed called for a motarorium on enforcement orders on mobile homes and wood cabins in order to save people from becoming homeless.

She said it was a “short term sticking plaster” and not an appropriate solution.

From previously working in the planning section, not enforcing the planning laws in this law would lead to significant difficulties in the future. It was wrong from an environmental, safety and amenity perspective.

“I am strongly advising you it’s not the way to go,” she insisted.