‘No room at inn’ as 170 more join housing list

HUNDREDS of families and individuals right across Galway City are facing a bleak Christmas and have found there was ‘no room at the inn’ in terms of City Council housing as waiting lists for social housing from the local authority have swollen to more than 2,600.

And a local housing agency has warned that the city’s housing crisis could worsen once the banks moratorium on repossessing homes ceases and repossessions soar in 12 to 18 months as families in communities all over the city, grapple with pay cuts job losses, the prospect of long-term unemployment and struggle to keep up with their mortgage repayments.

There are 2,614 families, couples and single people this Christmas on Galway City Council’s social housing waiting list and facing into the New Year with the grim prospect of not securing a home for up to seven years.

Waiting times for those on the City Council list have fallen slightly but the wait for a home on the east side of the city is now around five years and it is seven years for a home on the west side of the city.

The Council currently has a social housing stock of around 2,200, of which 85 are vacant. Ten of the empty homes are newly completed and haven’t been offered yet while the remaining 75 are in need of repair before they are offered to people on the list.

The refusal rate for social housing has dropped considerable to 36% and this is likely to fall further in 2010 as people’s expectations fall.

Director of Services for Housing at Galway City Council, Joe O’Neill, told the Galway City Tribune it is very unlikely that the Council will be able to add to that stock next year, even though it has planning permission to build 69 homes on the Ballymoneen Road.

“The Government has indicated it will not have any money for us to build new accommodation in 2010 but we will be looking at a system where we will lease some of the vacant properties that are in the city. This leasing system is being looked at by Government because of the amount of empty houses,” he said.

The city office of Threshold, a national not for profit organisation that helps solve people’s housing problems in both the private and local authority sectors, dealt with 3,631 queries this year, up 22% on 2008, and of those 1,590 are people who have ongoing problems.

Deirdre Murphy, the Galway Co-ordinator for Threshold, said people generally don’t contact the agency until they have reached ‘crisis point’. She said repossessions haven’t affected Galway this year due to the moratorium but once the banks lift the moratorium, the amount of people unable to repay their mortgages and have their homes confiscated by financial institutions will become clear.

Mr O’Neill noted that the social housing list would be far greater now if a moratorium wasn’t in place.