€40k grant for rundown homes could help housing crisis
Serious inroads could be made into the housing waiting list in both Galway city and county if only a fraction of the vacant properties were refurbished to liveable standards.
Under the Government’s Repair and Lease Scheme there are grants of up to €40,000 available to ‘do up’ thousands of unoccupied homes that could effectively go a long way towards solving the local authority housing crisis.
The figures reveal that there are more than 17,000 vacant properties across the whole of Galway (3,671 in the city and 13,690 in the county) – while the combined waiting list for Council housing stands at just over 7,000.
It means the current housing crisis could be largely resolved and it would also mean that there would be a less of a requirement for new social housing schemes to be funded or built.
Of course, the figure of 17,000 includes holiday homes that are largely unoccupied, vacant houses that would cost huge amounts of money to refurbish and empty properties that are located in areas where social housing is not a requirement.
In Tuam alone, €14 million is to be spent on the provision of social housing in the town with a further €1.7 million allocated for 10 new local authority homes in Ballinasloe – this alone would come close to refurbishing all of the houses required to eradicate the social housing crisis.
Minister Simon Coveney announced the scheme saying that it had already been piloted successfully in both Waterford and Carlow – he believes that the initiative can deliver up to 800 homes across the country this year alone.
The scheme has yet to be rolled out by Galway County Council or Galway City Council. When it does, it means that the owners of the property whose applications for refurbishment funding are successful will be required to lease the property to the local authority for a certain period of time – depending on the grant required to make the houses liveable.
Successful property owners can avail of upfront financing for the cost of repairs or else they need not even get involved in arranging the works and avail of a secure and reliable income from regular rental payments – and without having to take on landlord responsibilities.”
Ballinasloe councillor Aidan Donohue obtained the Galway figures and said that the current local housing crisis could be tackled in a meaningful way if this scheme was availed of.
He said that before any more new social housing is provided, the Repair and Lease Scheme should be availed of first as it would be much more cost effective.
“Even apart from that, it would address the current situation of the plethora of rural vacant houses that exist across rural Galway. Some of these houses are not in a bad state of repair and several thousand euros would go a long way to making them habitable again,” Cllr Donohue added.
Meanwhile, Roscommon-Galway TD Mick Fitzmaurice agrees that it will assist in solving the housing crisis in the county, but he stated that it was important for the likes of Galway County Council to roll it out as soon as possible.