The Committee on Housing and Homelessness was established in April 2016 in order to review the implications of the problems of housing and homelessness and to make recommendations in that regard.
The Committee’s report represents its findings after hearing from many witnesses and accepting over 80 written submissions. The report discusses at length the key issues and the corresponding recommendations in relation to nine major factors that have contributed to the housing crisis. The Committee identified a broad range of factors as contributing both individually and in combination with each other to the current difficulties in relation to housing and homelessness.
The Committee identified a large number of recommendations and called on the Government, the local authorities and other State bodies to prioritise these. Some of the key recommendations include the establishment of a Housing Procurement Agency to assist local authorities and approved housing bodies to deliver their social housing programme; increase social housing stock by at least 50,000 units (10,000 per year) through a programme of acquisition, refurbishment and new build; greater security of tenure for tenants; implement a Government strategy to deal with mortgage arrears and legislation for a moratorium on home repossessions until such time as those proposals are in place and seek flexibility from the European Commission on the application of the EU fiscal rules to the financing of social housing.
One of the Committee’s key recommendations has been adopted by the Government. In its repor,t the Committee recommended that Rent Supplement and Housing Assistance Payments should be increased to reflect current market rates. In an announcement made by Minister for Social Protection Leo Varadkar and Minister for Housing, Planning & Local Government Simon Coveney rent supplement and the Housing Assistance Payment scheme will be increased with effect from 1 July 2016.
The increase will be based on the differing market rents per area; Dublin’s rent limit for these supplements is set to increase on average by 29%, Cork city and Galway city by 21%, Laois and Roscommon by 25%, Westmeath and Kildare by 19%. Where supplements were insufficient and tenants engaged in an additional informal ‘top-up’ exchange with their landlords, these may also be regularised by the Department of Social Protection. The flexibility granted to the Department of Social Protection and local authorities in providing these schemes will exist post these increases. For more information on the rent supplement increase, click here.
A copy of the Committee’s final report can be accessed here. As reported in previous our previous bulletin representatives from FLAC and PILA appeared before the Committee (click here). A number of FLAC’s recommendations were adopted by the Committee regarding mortgage arrears and viable long term solutions.