HOMELESS AGENCIES have called on the Government to ensure the State stops subsidising poor-quality housing through rent supplement.
The administration of the supplement is to be transferred from the Department of Social Protection to the Department of the Environment.
National housing organisation Threshold said this planned transfer was “an important opportunity to address problems at the lower end of the private rented sector”.
Threshold said that by making the private rented sector more resilient and sustainable, instances of homelessness could be, in effect, reduced.
The agency’s national director, Bob Jordan, said the private rented sector was now “a key solution” to social housing need.
Latest figures show the need for social housing has reached a record 98,000 households. The Government has said it does not have the funds to buy or build local authority housing.
Threshold, the Simon Communities, St Vincent de Paul and Focus Ireland made presentations on the issue to the Oireachtas committee on the environment yesterday.
“It is particularly important in providing accommodation for single people, as bedsits and one-bed apartments are typically the housing units that a homeless person will seek when moving into accommodation,” Mr Jordan said.
“Single housing units in the private rented sector also tend to typify the housing someone occupied before becoming homeless.”
Mr Jordan said that to ensure private rented accommodation played its part in responding to homelessness, local authorities must ensure that landlords were fully compliant with their housing, legal and tax obligations.
Mike Allen, director of advocacy for Focus Ireland, said there was “virtually nothing” in terms of housing available for the voluntary bodies to rent. He said the Housing Sustainable Communities Agency was examining what properties held by the National Asset Management Agency were available and whether any of them would be suitable.
The Government is already considering plans to amend legislation that would oblige Nama to deliver more social housing and public amenities. Labour TD for Louth Gerald Nash expressed his concern about “the fact that there appears to be little or no social dividend from the Nama initiative”.
He said he had seen local authorities “disengaging” from social housing projects and had visited flats “akin to slum-like dwellings”.