4,000 local authority houses lie empty

Thousands of local authority houses are empty while the numbers of families on waiting lists and falling into homelessness grows.

On average, 3.2% of local authority homes, more than 4,000, are empty, around 75% of them awaiting repairs before they can be offered to a new tenant.

It takes an average of more than six months to get them repaired and relet with some authorities taking over a year.

Meanwhile, 90,000 families and individuals are on social housing waiting lists. Delays are worst in Cork City Council where last year there was a gap of 47 weeks between a tenant vacating a property and the property being ready to let again, plus another 15.8 weeks before the new tenant was in place. The council said a high refusal rate contributed to delays with some hard-to-let properties having more than one refusal before new tenants were found.

Leitrim and Longford county councils, which had fairly average delays of 28.4 weeks and 21.4 weeks between tenants, also reported high refusal rates. Longford said the rate of refusals in its area was increasing.

However, South Dublin County Council, with the third fastest turnaround time of 11.4 weeks, said giving tenants more input in advance of making offers under its ‘choice-based letting scheme’ had actually reduced allocation times.

Westmeath and Laois county councils had the fastest turnaround times, with 9.9 and 11 weeks.

Roughan McNamara, spokesman for housing charity Focus Ireland, said the number and visibility of vacant and boarded up houses in communities was an added source of frustration for homeless people.

He said every effort needed to be made to speed up repair and reoccupation times. “We are in the midst of a homeless and housing crisis so the idea that it’s taking six months to turn around a house into a home is not acceptable.

“We are not just blaming local authorities,” said Mr McNamara. “If it’s a question of resources, then they need to get resources, but if it’s a question of procedures not being in place to ensure followthrough and fast turn- around, then the procedures need to be looked at.”

Many councils also blamed delays on regulations requiring them to refurbish homes to a “significantly higher” standard than was required for private rented accommodation, and on demands they achieve BER energy efficiency ratings.

The Department of the Environment in the past 12 months created a €30m fund aimed at returning almost 2,000 vacant homes to use. Of the 20 local authorities who responded to queries about their progress in using the fund, most had got between a third and half of the targeted homes repaired and in use.

However, Dublin City Council said: “While we have accelerated the return of voids to use, additional voids arise every week due to deaths, transfers or other reasons.”

The department said funding would be made available to refurbish a further 1,000 homes in 2015.