Council runs out of money to restore vacant houses

Aoife O’Brien

DUBLIN City Council has halted the restoration of vacant social housing units until January 2020 due to a lack of funding.

Under the Government’s ‘Returning Vacant Properties to Productive Use’ programme, the city council avails of funding to bring homes that have been left vacant due to a death or a tenant moving, up to current rental standards.

Cllr Alison Gilliland (Lab), chairperson of the city council’s Strategic Policy Committee for Housing, said: "Refurbishing units left vacant due to a tenant passing on or moving to another tenancy is one of the quickest wins when it comes to accommodating those on our social housing waiting lists or those waiting in emergency homeless accommodation."

Currently there are approximately 450 of the 25,000 available social housing units left vacant, according to Dublin City Council.  This includes properties that were recently purchased by DCC which require work before they can be re-let.

All properties being allocated need to be brought up to current 2017 Rental Standards.

According to the city council, much of their housing stock is fairly old so practically all of its properties that become vacant require some work.

Housing Maintenance assess the degree of work required once the property becomes vacant.

By the end of November 2019 Dublin City Council had refurbished over 1,000 housing units or voids across various programmes. This is a 12 percent increase on 2018. This increased efficiency was achieved as a result of an improved Contractors’ Framework which was introduced in late 2018, and improvements to the management of the voids’ programme.

Dublin City Council receives approximately 45 percent of the funding for these refurbishments from the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government and is co-funded by the EU’s European Regional Development Fund.

The Dublin City Council budget for this work in 2019 was €18 million with €8 million recouped from the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government.

“Because of the improved efficiency of the Contractors’ Programme in 2019 it became clear in October that the €10 million nett provision would be exceeded well before the end of the year if the programme continued at the same pace,” a spokesperson for Dublin City Council told Northside People.

As a result, the programme has been slowed down until the budget provisions for 2020 take effect and the voids’ programme will be re-started fully from January 2020.

While the city council said that refurbishments have not been halted because of any deficit from the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government, Cllr Gilliland, who represents the Artane-Whitehall Local Electoral Area (LEA), said the Government should be providing funding to ensure that refurbishment works are not stopped.

“It’s incredible that the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government and the Minister (Eoghan Murphy) aren’t more on top of ensuring that there is no shortfall in funding for void refurbishments given the current crisis and ever increasing homeless family figures,” she said.

“It’s also incredible that the Department only funds just over half the costs of Dublin City Council void refurbishments instead of the full cost.

“This proves that money is an issue when it comes to putting a safe, secure roof over the heads of our most vulnerable.”

The Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government were unavailable for comment at the time of going to press.