Resolving the housing crisis: Raise the limits

Government efforts to resolve the housing crisis remain unequal to the great challenge so solutions, or at least part of the solution, must come from outside of Official Ireland.

One of those, iCare Housing, was launched last week and already almost 600 properties have been approved for the organisation’s scheme to keep distressed borrowers in a home. The not-for-profit body offers householders facing repossession an opportunity to join a mortgage-to-rent scheme. Even if this option might be, for some at least, a bitter pill to swallow, for many others it might end the terrible stress brought by the awful prospect of homelessness.

The Irish Mortgage Holders Organisation’s David Hall said iCare could help even more people if the limits on the mortgage-to-rent scheme were eased.

They estimate 15,000 cases where eviction may be a real possibility might be resolved without unnecessary conflict if changes were made by the Department of Housing. If this is the case then it is hard to understand why these changes have not been made already.