Lack of private parking and garden size among reasons Cork council homes were rejected
One home was turned down because the property had no private, offroad parking, although onstreet parking was available.
A lack of private parking, the location of a boiler, and a garden that was too small are just some of the reasons people have turned down permanent homes offered by Cork City Council.
A brand new, three-bedroom house was also rejected because there were only one-and-a-half bathrooms.
More than a quarter (146) of the 542 offers of housing by the council were rejected by prospective tenants in the first seven months of this year.
Other reasons given for the rejections included applicants saying they were too far from their children’s schools.
One home was turned down because the property had no private, offroad parking, although onstreet parking was available.
In another case, the applicant rejected the property because they decided they wanted to stay in their current property instead.
All of these properties had been chosen originally by the applicants after viewing them on the online Choice Based Letting System (CBL) which includes the address, a description of facilities, photographs, and a Google Map link showing the exact location of the property.
Cork City Council said that common reasons they are given for rejecting a property include:
- The applicant changes their area preferences;
- They want larger accommodation;
- They want a detached or semi-detached house, not mid-terrace;
- They want a house, not an apartment;
- The applicant fails to contact the council about the offer for an extended period; and the applicant deemed the property unsuitable once they viewed it.
There were 396 successful new tenancies out of 542 up to the end of July this year in Cork City. The remaining 146 units were not picked up by prospective tenants, Cork City Council said.
A protest was held in Blackpool this week over some 400 council-owned properties lying vacant across the city while more than 400 people are homeless.
The council confirmed that 14 houses are currently vacant in Maddens Buildings, where the protest was held, but six of these properties are due to be tenanted shortly and the remainder are under repair.
Cork City Council said that because these properties are more than 130 years old, they always require significant works to bring them back to a lettable standard.
The properties were vacated at different points between 2019 and this year and required a lot of construction works, a spokesperson said.
The pandemic temporarily slowed the rate of renovating vacant homes as locating emergency accommodation for people who found themselves homeless became an urgent concern, Cork City Council said.
But at the end of July, 212 vacant properties were under active repair. A further 242 were vacant but in the process of being allocated, a spokesperson for Cork City Council said.
