Council removes 12,500 from housing list

DUBLIN CITY Council has cut its housing waiting list almost in half by declaring more than 12,500 applicants “ineligible” to be housed by the local authority.

In its first assessment of the housing needs of the city’s poor since 2008 the council in recent months wrote to 26,019 households asking them to complete and return forms in order to remain on the housing waiting list.

Some 12,555 applicants did not reply to the council’s letters, or failed to provide all financial details required. The council has decided to remove these applicants from the list. City councillors have protested that many of these are still in need of housing.

Councillors who sit on the city’s housing committee said applicants who by virtue of their need for housing were often living in transient rented accommodation may not have received the council’s letters, while others had literacy issues and other difficulties which may render them unable or unlikely to fill in forms.

The council in its 2011 housing needs assessment has determined that 14,512 households have a social housing need. It said that, of these, some 6,222 households would have their housing needs “more appropriately met” outside the local authority system. Most of these applicants, some 5,157, should remain in the private rented sector, the council said.

Of the 8,290 the council has said are in need of local authority accommodation, some 5,105 are single and almost all of those are men. Lone parents make up 2,408 households. Some 461 couples with children make the list, and 316 couples without children.

Almost 80 per cent of those on the list have household incomes of less than €15,000 and more than 60 per cent are unemployed. At the last needs assessment in 2008, just 45 per cent of those who qualified were unemployed.

Waiting times for housing have also increased since the last assessment, with 68 per cent of people waiting between one and four years compared with 54 per cent in 2008. Some 24 per cent of applicants are now on the list for more than five years, in 2008 it was 21 per cent.

Councillors yesterday said they were gravely concerned about the large number of applicants who had been taken off the list.

“When they get that news they are going to be devastated by it. If they are dumped out who are they going to turn to?” Independent Cllr Mannix Flynn said.

Ciarán Perry (Ind) said more information was needed about the 12,555 to determine whether they remained in need of housing.

Speaking after the meeting Christy Burke (Ind) said it was clear the Government wanted the numbers to appear lower than they were.