Less refuse Council houses in recession

THE amount of people refusing council houses offered to them in the city has fallen by a half since the start of the recession. At the height of the boom in 2007, 35 percent of people offered houses by Galway city council refused them. In 2008, this figure had reduced as 26 percent of the total amount of people offered council houses declined the offer. However, the biggest fall occurred this year as up to the end of June there was only an 18 percent refusal rate. The waiting list for council houses in the city has been steadily increasing over the years and there are now over 2,500 people on the register. This number is likely to keep rising as no specific social housing developments are planned by the council for next year due to budgetary constraints.In addition, private developers who are obliged to give a percentage of their development to social and affordable schemes have severely cut back their building activity due to lack of demand. The current average waiting times for people seeking a council house on the Westside of the city is 7-9 years while the average waiting times for people looking for houses on the eastside of the city is 4-6 years.A council official has confirmed that up to the start of November there were 85 vacant council properties around the city. The reasons why the houses are vacant include death of tenant, surrender of the house for varying reasons and tenant transfers to an alternative council property. Some of these houses are subject to major refurbishment works before they can be re-offered to tenants. Ten houses had been accepted by people but are awaiting change of tenancy works which takes a considerable period of time. However, the council confirmed that 21 homes had been offered to people but had been refused and were in the process of being re-offered.Councillor Collette Connolly a member of the City Council’s Strategic Housing Policy Committee says she is glad the figures for people refusing houses has declined and believes it’s probably indictative of the current economic climate. Councillor Connolly believes the reason such a large number of people were refusing houses was they were not happy with the location they were being offered homes in. “On application forms, people were allowed state specific areas they wanted to live in and they were being offered houses that were not in their area of preference. It was usually because they had children in schools in these areas and they did not want to move them. “People were also being offered apartments when they wanted houses. People with young children generally don’t want to live in apartments. They don’t want to be traipsing up stairs twenty times a day. The council was not taking these factors into consideration,” she pointed out.Councillor Connolly agreed that there was a lot of anger among people struggling to buy private houses that the refusal rate for council houses was so high. “People might think these people are being choosy but everybody is entitled to equality about where they live, even those on low incomes. The majority of people on these lists earn less than €20,000 per year,” she added. Councillor Connolly said it was ‘disgraceful’ that no council estates were being built this year. “It’s scandalous, the council borrowed €20 million last year to fund the housing capital building programme and now there is no money to build houses.”