More than half of renting households receive housing costs support, report finds

A report has indicated that 54% of households that are renting received support to help pay for their housing costs in 2020.

The Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) report published on Thursday found 293,673 households received support for their housing costs in 2020, which amounts to 16% of all households.

Since 1994, when there was just 134,973 households in receipt of housing cost supports, the ESRI said there has been a shift away from the direct provision of support – through accommodation owned by local authorities and approved housing bodies – towards indirect subsidisation of housing costs in the private rental sector.

Among the supports that help people with the rising cost of housing are the Housing Assistance Payment (HAP), the Rental Accommodation Scheme and Rent Supplement.

These supports assist around one in three supported renters today, compared to just one in five in the early 1990s.

The ESRI report concludes that supported renters have more affordable housing options compared to unsupported renters, which remains the case after controlling for dwelling type, location and quality.

The report also examined how targeted housing supports are to those who most need them.

There are low-income renters who receive no support for their housing costs and face high rent-to-income ratios, while 16.7% of supported renters are in the top half of the income distribution.

Barra Roantree, one of the authors of the report, said its finding that almost one in five supported renters are in the top half of the income distribution “raises questions about how well targeted these supports are”.

The ESRI also estimates that the share of households eligible to apply to their local authority for support with housing costs fell from 46.8% to 33.9% between 2011 and 2019, mostly because of a freeze to most income limits.

Rent costs for new tenancies have increased by 24% between 2017 and 2020.

The rent limits for HAP cover a very small share of properties, particularly in cities for single adults, the report also found.

Only 6% of one bedroom tenancies registered in Dublin in 2020 came under the maximum rent allowed for single adults claiming HAP, while only seven out of 31 local authorities had at least a quarter of one bedroom tenancies below these limits.

Michael Doolan, another author of the report, said: “Given the expected reliance on HAP to meet social housing needs in the short to medium-term, the anomalies created by a highly localised system of differential rents are likely to affect a growing number of households over the coming years.

“This means that without reform, more households will receive varying levels of support for their housing costs depending on which county they live in.”

Rachel Slaymaker, another report author, said: “Our report highlights the chronic undersupply of affordable rental accommodation in many areas, particularly for low-income single adults.

“Addressing this is likely to require sustained investment in and expansion of the public housing stock for rent: something that will entail more than just increasing expenditure.”

Part of the Government’s Housing for All strategy to tackle increasing rent costs is to provide 18,000 “cost rental” homes between 2022 and 2030.

This is long-term rental tenure where homes are made available to middle-income earners at below open-market rates. Where State funding is made available, rents are to be set at 25% below market rates.