1,652 on council's housing list seeking single-bed accommodation

THE fact that Meath Co Council has 1,652 people on its housing list seeking single-bed accommodation was described as “alarming” and “an enormous figure” at a meeting of the council this week when calls were made for more progress to be made on this aspect of housing policy.

Although councillors were generally in praise of the council’s overall progress on housing over the last four or five years, they wanted the council to look urgently at the needs of people seeking this type of accommodation. They pointed out that many of the applicants for single-bed units were over 65 years of age.

Independent Cllr Nick Killian said he was delighted to see that 160 houses were being provided both by the council and the Tuath Housing Association but the figure for the number of people on the housing list seeking one-bed units was “enormous”.

“And yet whilst we have allocated some single-bed units in recent times there is not sufficient numbers of one-bed units being constructed. When we look further down into those figures and look at the age profiles many of the people are over 65. For their own reasons they ended up in that situation”.

He had one situation last week where a constituent aged 83 had managed to be provided with a house. “I was delighted for her that she was able to be housed coming towards the end of her life. However, I’d be very worried that over a period of 10 years how the hell are we going to reduce that number of 1,652? Like, it would mean building estates of one-bed houses.” I’m quite worried about that and I’m sure other members of the council are. The housing report that was given to us is a good report and there is huge progress everywhere compared to 10 and even five years ago.And we are building more houses but in our overall policy how do we stitch in that figure or dal with that figure? We’re not even in a position to deal with that even with the best will in the world from our housing team.

Independent Cllr Gillian Toole wondered if there was any progress on a supported-living unit ot a hostel for Meath. She aid she was one of five Meath cllrs on the North Eastern Health Forum and at their September meeting three hostels were announced for Dublin north city and county. While hostels were not a long-term solution they were at least better than bed and breakfast or hotel accommodation. This was supported by Independent Cllr Noel French who said “we really do need one [hostel]. In relation to the provision of single-bed housing he said “At the current rate of delivery it will be 43 years before we address all those who need a single unit”.

There were 286 units being made available in Ratoath but she had not seen any Part V provision within that. (Part 5 provides for the State to capture a portion of the increase in land value reslting from the grsnting of planning permission for residential development – 20% to be used for delivery of social and affordable housing).

Housing Offier Barry Lynch said he noted the concerns of Cllrs Kilian and French about single-bed accommodation and the council was looking at ways to bring that number down. He agreed the numbers were very high but they were looking at more apartment developments in order to accommodate that cohort of people who needed that kind of unit.