1,441 applicants on housing list in Navan Municipal District

There are 1,441 applicants on the housing list in the Navan Municipal District area with many waiting up to eight years to be housed.

According to figures from the council, applicants for one and two bedroom homes have been on the list since 2017, while the waiting time for three and four bedroom houses is up to five years.

There are 734 on the waiting list for one bedroom homes, 499 for two, 150 for three and 58 for four.

The largest number are waiting on homes in Navan town - 1,277 with 103 of those seeking one and two bedroom homes. The number of housing applicants in the Bohermeen area is 67, while in Dunderry there are 40 on the list, another 40 are on the list in Robinstown and 17 are looking for homes in Rathkenny.

At a recent meeting of Navan Municipal Council, Cllr Eddie Fennessy asked how many were on the waiting list and the waiting time for each category of home.

He said the waiting periods, particularly for one and two bedroom homes was concerning.

“There isn’t much change in the statistics since last I received the housing figures from the council. One-bed need is 51 per cent, two-bed need is 34 per cent, three-bed is 10 per cent and at four per cent the four-bed list is lowest in Navan.

“The delivery of one bed properties is still a matter of huge concern. Over half of the entire housing list in Navan is made up of one bed applicants. I would hazard a guess and say that the vast majority of the homeless people accessing emergency accommodation are one bed applicants too.

“To be fair to the council, there has been a reasonable supply of one-beds into the system in Navan over the past twelve months. However, the demand hasn’t abated and the pressure for those types of properties remains stubbornly high.

“Direct build and Part V projects which contain an element of one bed properties aren’t supplying enough properties to meet the demand for one bed’s. Large restoration or direct build one-bed projects with the capacity to deliver at scale is what’s required.

“I ask the council to be ambitious, to think outside of the box. To use what land or buildings are available to develop projects of the size required to meet this persistently high demand,” Cllr Fennessy concluded.