42 years to clear city housing crisis

The shocking estimates were made at a City Council meeting during a debate on the housing crisis.

It was confirmed that there are currently 4,209 households on the city’s waiting list which equates to between 12,000 and 15,000 people.

Director of Services for Housing, Tom Connell, said that the Council has funding for 13 new Council houses on the Ballymoneen Road. That site in Knocknacarra has capacity for a total of 69 units and the Council is awaiting funding approval for that so it can proceed with all 69, and not just the 13 as part of phase one. He is meeting with officials in Department of Environment this week about the project.

Government announced a €3.8 billion national social housing strategy earlier this year as it pledged to banish waiting lists. It emerged at this week’s meeting that as of yet none of this funding has been given to the City Council.

Chief Executive, Brendan McGrath said he hadn’t definitive figures but he expected that the City Council would tap into that fund in order to finance the construction of “hundreds” of new social houses in the city. Mr McGrath agreed the housing situation in the city was at a “crisis” point.

Mr Connell said the Council’s housing department staff are currently drawing up plans for land-banks in public ownership across the city with a view to have sites ‘shovel-ready’, with planning permissions granted, once the Government money is available to draw down.

Earlier in the meeting, city councillor Frank Fahey outlined the extent of the problem. “We have 4,209 households on a waiting list. We housed 104 households in 2014. At that rate, it will take 42 years before the housing list is cleared,” said Cllr Fahy.

Independent city councillor, Noel Larkin, said it would take “in excess of €2 billion” to house everyone on the waiting list. He said the “government won’t give us the money to do it”, and so the Council should look at other ways, including the private sector.

Independent city councillor Catherine Connolly said every Government since she elected to the Council in 1999 had failed to tackle the housing crisis which has worsened every year since.

She said the City Council is “utterly reliant on a landlord class” to house people. She said city officials were merely acting as estate agents for the landlord class and Government policy was facilitating and encouraging that.

Some people are on the waiting list for 14 years, she pointed out.