Tipperary council says 75 homeless people are in emergency accommodation in the county

Tipperary County Council has so far identified long term or more suitable short term accommodation for eight of the 13 families it had to place in emergency accommodation when they became homeless in recent months. 

But just eight of the 33 single people in this situation have so far been offered accommodation, the council’s Director of Housing Sinead Carr reported to the local authority’s July meeting. 

She said the council has 75 people in emergency accommodation, including the 17 adults and 25 children that made up the 13 families. 

And 95% of the council’s emergency accommodation budget for the year is already spent after six months.

To date, the council has identified long term or more appropriate short term accommodation for all bar five of the 13 families who became homeless. 
Work is continuing to find suitable accommodation for the remaining five families.

As she explained at previous council meetings, the increase in homelessness in the county is caused by a rise in notices to quit issued to people availing of Housing Assistance Payments (HAP) and Rental Accommodation Scheme (RAS) as private landlords sell up due to rising house prices. 

Ms Carr said rents were rising in the private sector due to the shortage of private rental housing and there was a lack of private housing in the county to meet middle income renters, which in turn put pressure on low income renters. 

She explained that HAP rates in the county were insufficient in the current market but pointed out that increasing them was a double edged sword as it would in turn affect rent prices.
 
Alongside this, income limits were too low for social housing supports and there was insufficient emergency accommodation in the county to meet the current spike in demand.
To deal with the crisis, Ms Carr said the council was working on getting two more family Open Front Door housing units for people who become homeless by the end of the year bringing the total to nine in the county. The council also planned to roll out four more Housing First units (for very vulnerable homeless people) in the next few weeks to address the needs of some of the 33 single people in emergency accommodation. 

This will bring the number of Housing First units in the county to 16. Six more Housing First units will be delivered by the end of the year. 

Ms Carr outlined the council has also assigned an extra clerical officer to deal with homeless cases presenting to the local authority. It has also changed and strengthened its procedures in dealing with families living in private rental accommodation who receive a notice to quit. 

She advised families who do receive a notice to quit to contact the council immediately in relation to finding alternative housing and not to wait until the last month before they are due to leave their accommodation.
These families would undergo a Housing Support Assessment and link in with the council official who helps people qualifying for HAP to source housing.

Minister to receive shopping list of actions Tipperary County Council is seeking to tackle housing crisis in this county

Tipperary County Council is sending a letter to the Minister for Housing & Local Government detailing a shopping list of measures it wants the Government to introduce to ease the housing crisis in this county that has caused a spike in people becoming homeless in recent months.

A draft letter to the Minister setting out seven actions ranging from tax incentives to expanding social housing income limits to encourage more private house building in the county and assist those on low incomes to secure affordable and social housing was produced at the conclusion of the council’s July meeting in Clonmel on Monday.

The council spent two and a half hours considering and debating how to tackle the housing crisis at the meeting during which the council’s Director of Housing Services, Sinead Carr, and Senior Housing Engineer, Jonathan Cooney, gave presentations on actions the local authority is taking.

The seven measures the council is urging Housing & Local Government Minister Darragh O’Brien to take are:

1. Increase the social housing income limit in Tipperary to the same level as neighbouring counties Limerick and Waterford.
2. Reintroduce long term leasing as an option for small time landlords.
3. Appoint a second Vacant Housing officer for Tipperary due to the county’s size and length and the level of work required to address dereliction and vacancy.
4. Amend the Repair and Lease Scheme, targeted at over the shop living, to include a tax-based incentive scheme for those property owners in towns of 15,000 people and less.
5. Seek the introduction of a “targeted, limited and locational appropriate” tax incentive or other innovative financial support mechanism to deliver housing on lands where there is currently planning permission.
The incentives or supports would include (but not be limited to), a reduction of VAT on new builds, similar to the support given to the hospitality sector when it was deemed to be in crisis.
They would also include an increase in the Central Bank multiplier for house purchasers given the better standard of homes currently being built and the lower operation cost of running them. The council suggests consideration also be given to introducing old Section 23 type tax incentives that would be time limited and location specific.
6. Amend the Housing for All Loan to better accommodate those who cannot access social housing supports.
7. Raise the cap on the First Home Scheme in Tipperary from €250,000 to €290,000 to facilitate affordable housing development to occur. This national scheme supports first-time buyers on moderate incomes to buy new homes at reduced prices. 

Several councillors, including the council’s Housing Strategic Policy Committee Chairman Cllr Kieran Bourke, supported Sinn Féin’s Cllr David Dunne’s call for a temporary moratorium on issuing enforcement notices for the removal of mobile homes and log cabins that haven’t planning permission until the housing crisis has abated.

Cllr Dunne cited the case of a constituent on the housing list for 14 years and who purchased a log cabin to live in while Cllr Máirín McGrath highlighted the case of a young pregnant woman, whose family wanted to provide a mobile home for her as she had nowhere to live and didn’t qualify for either social housing or the Housing Assistance Payment.

They argued that pursuing enforcement notices on this type of accommodation at the moment would just end up further increasing the number of people who are homeless.

But Director of Housing Sinead Carr was strongly against this proposal. She said mobile homes sounded like an easy solution but she insisted they were the wrong solution in terms of their planning, residential amenity and environmental impact.

But Cllr Bourke and Cllr Dunne again urged the council to defer enforcement orders on mobile homes for the foreseeable future.

Council CEO Joe MacGrath stepped in and supported Ms Carr’s stance. While mobile homes might deal with the urgency of the issue they wouldn’t deal with a person’s long-term accommodation need.

“I can assure you the person will be back onto you saying that it doesn’t address their need or the person who owns the site will be looking to have it taken away.”

Cllr Dunne responded by asking: “Do ye want to make people homeless”?

Mr MacGrath shot back: “you know we don’t”. But he conceded that while he couldn’t give an undertaking not to enforce the law, he would ask the Directors of Services for Housing and Planning to liaise with each other to deal with specific cases in this area.

Meanwhile, a 20-8 majority of the council voted to reject a motion tabled by Workers & Unemployment Action Group Cllr Pat English calling on the council to request the Dáil to affirm into law that a housing emergency exists in Ireland.

The motion called for the law to continue for three years after being passed by the Government and that it be reviewed by the Oireachtas after the expiry of that three years.

He argued that passing this law would enable unprecedented emergency actions to be taken to deal with the crisis as had been done in the past to deal with the banking crisis of the last recession and the Covid-19 pandemic.
His motion was seconded by Cllr Dunne and also supported in the vote by Labour Cllr Fiona Bonfield and Independent councillors Joe Hannigan, Hughie McGrath, Máirín McGrath, Andy Moloney and Annemarie Ryan. It was opposed by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael members as well as Independents Cllr Kevin O’Meara and Michael O’Meara. Twelve councillors were absent for the vote.

In tabling the motion Cllr English said this was the “longest and most severe” housing crisis the country has witnessed and he supported homeless charity founder Peter McVerry’s proposals to reduce rents across the board by 25% and reduce the tax landlords pay on their rental income by 50%.

Cllr English said the Government should extend the ban on evictions introduced during the Covid-19 pandemic and called for social house building to be undertaken on a much larger scale by local authorities.

Clonmel’s Cllr Siobhán Ambrose said she believed the Minister for Housing was doing a good job and lots of different schemes to support and generate different types of housing were being tried.

She said the main issue was that houses can’t be rolled out in the morning. It took time.
And she pointed out three housing projects in her area were delayed due to planning objections.

Fine Gael’s Cllr John Fitzgerald said telling the Government there was a housing emergency would not be new to them or the Oireachtas and argued that proposing ideas and tweaks to policies was more beneficial.