Singles to get priority on housing waiting lists

A LOCAL authority is prioritising single people on its housing lists in west Cork.

Nearly half the 1,100-plus home-seekers on county council housing lists in the area are single males or single-parent families.

Single men and single women without families represent about one-third of all applicants. Most cannot compete in the private housing market in west Cork, where the rental outlay is comparable, in some cases, to prices in Dublin and Cork.

County council executive staff in west Cork confirmed that plans are underway to include housing for single people in all new projects.

Administrative officer Jerome C O’Sullivan conceded it “could take some time” for the benefits of the scheme to take effect.

“At the moment, we are talking to the council’s architects and design team, where the plans include two-storey, two-bedroom, houses suitable for single applicants in all proposed new schemes.”

He emphasised that the proposed project would be given priority in all social housing programmes. In the past, council officials acknowledged that single applicants fell through the net in the letting of council housing.

Assistant County Manager Theresa White, who formulated the project, admitted at a 2005 meeting of the western committee that there was “a hierarchy of need” in the letting of council housing stock with priority given to applicants with children.

Cllr Joe Carroll said he was not being alarmist, but felt current house building policies discriminated against single people. He pointed out that new three-bedroom houses being completed in Skibbereen catered only for traditional-type families. “Until such times as two-bedroom houses are made available, single people should be considered as suitable tenants for houses in two new housing estates being completed locally,” he said.

His Fianna Fáil colleague Cllr Donal Casey said Bantry had the highest percentage of single people on the waiting list. He pointed out that 57 of the 78 applicants were single. A further 14 applicants had one dependent, four had two dependents and three of the single applicants had three dependent children.

“Society is changing rapidly,” he said, “and the council must adjust to the needs of single people, many of them 40 years and over, who will not get on the private housing ladder.”

Mr Casey said it was not good enough that of the planned 100 houses in Bantry over the next three years, the house sizes were not catering for single people.

The number of single applicants on the waiting lists in Bantry is greater than the total numbers in Clonakilty and Skibbereen.