‘Families will be homeless due to council rent increases’

Families across Westmeath are going to be homeless because of crippling increases in rents for council houses and unreasonable thresholds for rent assistance schemes, according to members of the county council.

They have called for a meeting with Minister for Housing, Darragh O’Brien, TD, to discuss the housing crisis and a special meeting of the council to discuss rents for local authority houses, affordable housing and other issues.

At their February meeting last week, councillors outlined hardships that are forcing bread-earners to cut back on their working weeks to qualify for rent assistance or avoid rent increases. Local authority rents went up by 25%, or €20, this year.

Cllr Ken Glynn said one bread-earner is being forced to borrow money to travel to work because of the rent increase. Another increase will see this family on the road as middle to low income families are having to decide if they can afford to stay in their homes, he said.

Cllr Glynn rejected a suggestion by senior executive, Mark Keaveney, that hardship cases could be brought to the attention of the housing department and would be viewed sympathetically. He said he brought this particular case to their attention and was told that was the rent. “It’s no good going to them,” he said.

He called for a special meeting to discuss rents and asked that Mr Keaveney and his team prepare a report for that meeting. He also called for a meeting with Minister O’Brien to discuss the housing crisis.

Cllr Glynn acknowledged that the council is making inroads into providing one= and two=bedroom accommodation in Mullingar, but said there is a huge need for four-bedroom houses, especially for families with children on the autism spectrum or with medical issues.

He spoke of an “anomaly” in the turn-key project saying that if a tenant is lucky enough to get a turn-key house they cannot avail of the tenant purchase scheme in the future. The whole idea of the tenant purchase scheme was to enable people to own their own homes, he argued.

Cllr Glynn said that a family of four has to be on €27,300 to get on the council housing list and if their income is €28,000, they get nothing. Genuine people are being turned away because the limit is ridiculously low, he said.

He also complained that the limits to qualify for HAP or RAS (rent assistance schemes) are ridiculously high. He claimed that the majority of people going into HAP are doing so in the knowledge that they are going into debt, but the choice is that or sleeping on the streets or on couches.

“We need to open the door for people to get them housed,” Cllr Glynn said.

Cllr Frank McDermott seconded the call for a meeting with Minister O’Brien. He said that there is a huge demand for one-bedroom homes in Castlepollard and Collinstown, where there are at least 15 three-bedroom houses with one person in them. Many of those people would jump at a chance to down-size, because a lot of these properties are falling into disrepair and it won’t be long until the council is faced with an enormous repairs bill, he said.

Cllr McDermott said that recent research revealed that 29% of properties around The Square in Castlepollard were unoccupied. Properties like those should be brought back into use to rejuvenate small towns.

Cllr Vinny McCormack told of a family in “dire straits” in Streamstown. They are renting privately and have three children and an income of about €31,000. They cannot get on the housing list and they cannot understand why.

He said rents for council houses were unrealistic. He said the recent rent hikes were based on 30% of a household’s income, but suggested that in view of the rise in the cost of living, of food, fuel, electricity, facing families, 20% would be more realistic.

Cllr McCormack said the sooner the council can build the necessary houses and get away from schemes such as HAP, the better. He said the money put into such schemes could be better spent and that the schemes are affecting the private rental market and helping to drive up rents there.

Cllr Mick Dollard said that since the closure of St Loman’s Hospital, there are a lot of former psychiatric patients living in Mullingar without the safety net of a psychiatric unit and bed. They are living in poor accommodation and the council does not have the expertise to look after them.

Cllr Dollard worked with the HSE for 40 years, but he feels they are not meeting their responsibilities to these people. Many of them are not complying with their medication requirements, which is why we have so many suicides and homicides in Ireland, he said. He wants “joined up thinking” among the various agencies to tackle the problem.

Cllr Dollard spoke of a 66-year-old man who has been on the housing list since 1996 and was never offered a house. He fell through the net because he was on the rent supplement scheme, he said. Cllr Dollard called for a review of letting priorities and differential rents.

He complained of people being rehoused out of places like Grange, Dalton Park and Raithin, moved from one three=bedroom house to another three-bedroom house and asked why that was done. The houses they vacated are now boarded up and in many cases they are being occupied illegally or vandalised. It’s going to cost us a fortune to put them right, he warned.

Cllr Paddy Hill said he had at least five families in his area facing notices to quit. “It is very annoying to listen to a woman telling you she has three children and is under notice to quit, with nowhere to go,” he said.

Cllr Hill called for provision of emergency accommodation in the Castlepollard, Collinstown/, Delvin area because of the number of children and their families there that are going to be displaced. The last thing anyone wants to see is someone out on the road, he said. He was assured that the housing department would look into it.

It is three years since we zoned land in Castlepollard for housing and not a spade has been put in the ground since – Cllr Hill asked why it is taking so long. He said the minister is telling us money is not the problem “so what is?”.

“Is it that we as a council aren’t doing what we should be doing as fast as we should be doing it? I believe there are at least 5,000 housing projects being held up because of people objecting when they shouldn’t be objecting to people being housed,” he added.

Cllr Hill spoke of people who don’t qualify for housing because their income is too high, and they don’t qualify for a mortgage either, because their income is too low. He said he was “totally fed up listening to report after report and no action on the ground”.

Cllr John Dolan said people are desperate and the councillors feel helpless because they cannot do what they are supposed to do – house people: “But until we provide houses it’s not going to happen.”

He said that rents of €1,600 a month were being sought in Athlone for “very average places”. He felt it would “do no harm” to get the minister down because “we need quicker fixes”.

Cllr Dolan welcomed the housing developments that are coming on stream in Athlone, but said that it took three to four years to achieve. He hoped things would speed up, but warned that there would have to be a serious train of delivery of houses because the demand was so high.

Cllr Paul Hogan said that rent increases for council houses were crippling families. He spoke of one family where the bread-earner was looking at going from a five-day a week to a three-day a week to reduce their income and thereby, reduce their rent. “We are penalising people in employment,” he said.

Cllr Hogan said there were 18 families in emergency accommodation in the midlands, 13 of them single-parent families. A family has become homeless each day for the last six months, he said. He went on to say that in the first year of the pandemic, homelessness dropped because of a freeze on evictions and rents, but it is on the rise again.

Cllr Aengus O’Rourke said that social housing provision in urban areas where the demand is high has become a complicated affair, through no fault of the council. He said that choice based letting is in place in several areas and wondered why Westmeath has turned its back on it. It is a system that allows housing applicants, including transfer applicants and Housing Assistance Payment (HAP) tenants, to submit an expression of interest in advertised vacant social housing properties that become available for letting that they would like to live in and that meet their needs.

Cllr Hazel Smyth said a lot of her friends were considering leaving Ireland because they could not find houses. She spoke of the 40 vacant housing units in the Mullingar Kinnegad Municipal District and urged that they be brought back into use as we face this housing crisis.

She called for a portal where people could check if they were on the housing list and their status. She also called for more emergency accommodation in Mullingar and Kinnegad district.

Cllr Smyth said it was unfair that people who were previously homeowners were being excluded from social housing. She said that capital gains taxes were resulting in houses being left vacant because people who have inherited them, but don’t need them, are reluctant to sell them and face 33% capital gains tax. As a result, houses are being left empty across the country.

Cllr Bill Collentine supported the call for more four-bedroom houses for families and more houses for the elderly who cannot pay rent because the pension is too low. This needs to be done soon or a lot of them will be homeless, he warned.

He said the council should be giving out loans to enable people to provide their own homes.

Cllr Denis Leonard called for incentives to get owners to sell derelict buildings so people can live in them. He called for sheltered accommodation for elderly people, saying that this would open up houses for families.

Cllr Leonard also called for greater enforcement to ensure that council tenants kept their houses in good condition so that when they leave them, they can be allocated to new tenants quickly. He also suggested that applications should be scrutinised closely to ensure that the applicants are genuine.

Cllr Frankie Keena, cathaoirleach of the county council, said they had to look at the cause of homelessness and the need for wraparound services in, for example, cases of addiction. He remarked that where someone presents as homeless in Westmeath they are sent back to their county of origin, but what happens if they are non-nationals? And what happens if a homeless person presents with vouchers, but the accommodation provider does not accept vouchers?

Mr Keaveney (council official) pointed out that there are 750 units under construction or on the way to approval in Westmeath at present. Three hundred are being built and 200 are expected to be delivered this year; 140 of them are one-bedroom and 60 are four-bedroom. Turnkey houses are coming into the council’s stock in the normal way. He said that as soon as properties become available, the down-sizing option will be there, but he reported that it was not as popular as might be expected.

He advised members that the HAP and RAS thresholds are being reviewed by the department.

In response to Cllr Dollard’s point about people being transferred from one local authority house to another, Mr Keaveney said that if they were transferred, it is because they were entitled to be. He pointed out that the council did not have properties available for a long time and a lot of transfers approved years ago were coming through now.

Mr Keaveney said that a multi-agency approach is adopted regarding homelessness. The council meet with the HSE and the prison services and are trying to deal with people coming out of institutions, people with complex issues such as addiction or mental health, in a multi-agency way.

In reply to Cllr Hill, Mr Keaveney said that the council is dealing with notices to quit on an ongoing basis. The units in Castlepollard will be constructed this year, hopefully.

Regarding choice based lettings, Mr Keaveney said the council is in discussion with the department to see if it would suit Westmeath and they will try to progress this in the coming months.

Mr Keaveney said the longer someone is on the council housing list, the more likely they are to get a house, but if someone is made homeless or has other issues such as a disability, they jump the queue.

In respect of emergency accommodation, Mr Keaveney said that the council is working hard to increase it in the region and in the county. However, the best way to address homelessness is to provide houses, he said. They are also looking at providing sheltered accommodation for the elderly, but it can be hard to get across the line in many cases.

A vacant houses liaison officer has been appointed by the council and Mr Keaveney is hopeful that a more “robust regime” will apply shortly.

The council are looking at providing wraparound services where needed, but Mr Keaveney stressed that their principal responsibility is to provide bricks and mortar.

People who become homeless and are not from the county are generally referred to their county of origin, and those from outside the country are referred to wherever they were originally housed, but the council is flexible on that.

It was agreed that the minister would be invited to meet the members and that a special meeting be held to discuss rents, affordable housing and other issues would be convened.