Plans to overhaul social housing wait list system welcomed

Charities and politicians have welcomed the Government’s decision to revamp the current “wasteful” social housing waiting list system and have called for the urgent implementation of proposed changes.

Commenting on the announcement by Minister for Housing Simon Coveney that his department will introduce a choice-based letting system as standard, the chairwoman of one of the State’s largest housing charities said the move would lead to more efficiency in allocating vacant units.

“The refusal system is very cumbersome . . . it’s very wasteful of resources and it’s leaving very valuable housing vacant at a time when we absolutely cannot afford it,” said Threshold chairwoman Aideen Hayden.

“The evidence from the UK and Ireland is that [choice-based letting] is far more efficient. You have people who actually want particular housing able to register interest in it.”

Register interest

Whereas current social housing applicants must wait for offers from their local authority before choosing to accept or refuse them on a one-by-one basis, the new process will allow applicants to look at a list of available properties and register their interest in various units.

Units will be allocated according to need, suitability and the length of time a person has spent on the waiting list.

Homeless charity the Simon Community says it would “hope and expect” that the overhauled system will lead to a reduction in homeless figures among an estimated 100,000 individuals on housing waiting lists nationwide.

“The key to all this is urgent implementation and we would be hopeful that we will see this coming into effect very soon,” a spokeswoman said.

Refusal rate

“We’ve been saying for a very long time that people should be supported to stay in the community they want to stay in, where they already have supports available, where their children are going to school, where their family is.”

The local authority that had the highest refusal rate for housing offers last year was Cork County Council, where half of all offers were turned down.

Its mayor Séamus McGrath described the figure as being unacceptably high, and said the council was rolling out its own pilot project for social housing allocations which will closely resemble the proposed national model.

“The refusal figures we have today, which range between 40 per cent and 50 per cent, are unacceptably high, and we have to look at new ways of engaging with the housing applicants,” said the Fianna Fáil councillor.

“The current system certainly needs to be overhauled. It isn’t working properly.”