Social houses turned down in Tipperary as applicants 'not interested' in area

A total of 3,566 people were waiting for social housing in Tipperary in 2021, a decrease of 70 on the figure for 2020 and an increase of 65 from 2019.
According to figures released by Tipperary County Council, following a Freedom of Information request by The Nationalist, there are 104 vacant social houses in the county, and 5,107 occupied social houses in Tipperary.
Fifty social houses were built by the county council in 2021 at a cost of €11,632,425. This compares to 56 houses built in 2020 at a cost of €11,851,639, and 38 houses built in 2019 at a cost of €6,730,071.
Tipperary County Council has also revealed that 96 social houses that were offered to applicants in 2021 were refused.
The reasons for those refusals included anti-social behaviour (one), failure to make contact with the council (four), not interested in the area (ten), an undesirable housing estate (six), unsuitable to current need (21), larger accommodation wanted (four) and no reason given (50). There were 110 such refusals in 2020 and 98 in 2019. The cost of fitting out social housing in Tipperary in 2021 amounted to €4,571,744.33.
The cost in 2020 was €4,403,996 and the refurbishment costs in 2019 were €2,346,188.
However the county council declined to provide any information on the five longest applicants on the social housing waiting list and how long they had been on the list.
Cllr Marie Murphy, Cathaoirleach of Tipperary County Council, says that reducing the number of people on the housing list was a priority.
However she says that while the figures indicated that the waiting list stood at 3,566, a more accurate figure would be a net housing list of approximately 1,100 people throughout the county.
“There are probably in the region of 2,300 applicants that are already in some social housing setting, so they are on the transfer list,” says Cllr Murphy.
She says that these people either need a larger house or one that is adapted to cater for a person or people with a disability.
The county council’s building programme target for 2022-26 is 887 units. The council had exceeded its target of 625 units to be built between 2018 and 2021 and had provided 781 new units in that period. A total of 225 new units would be built this year, including some houses that were due to be completed last year but had been delayed by Covid lockdowns.
She said it was encouraging to see the council back building social houses again, although Cllr Murphy also made the point that construction costs were increasing for a variety of reasons including inflation, Brexit and the fallout from Covid-19.
The county’s Cathaoirleach said that in the region of 40,000 houses, in public and private schemes, needed to be built throughout the country every year.
No council houses had been built between 2009-10 and 2015-16 because of the recession.
“Whenever the next downturn comes, the Government cannot stop providing finance to local authorities to build social houses,” Cllr Murphy added.

Tipperary village being transformed with some Golden memories and hard work