Mayor of Clonmel warns of influx of homeless families due to housing crisis

The scale of the housing crisis for families accommodated in the private rental market with the aid of Housing Assistance Payment was laid bare at Tipperary County Council’s monthly meeting where the Mayor of Clonmel warned of an influx of such families becoming homeless.
The meeting heard from Clonmel Mayor Cllr Michael Murphy and other councillors how the number of families presenting as homeless is already rising due to an exodus of private landlords selling up their investment houses due to high property prices.
The council’s Director of Housing, Sinead Carr, told councillors the huge pressure on homeless services in the county was the result of a “perfect storm” of rising housing prices, landlords selling up and the cessation of the two-year moratorium on evictions put in place during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Cllr Murphy highlighted the lack of available private rented accommodation and soaring rent prices in his hometown during a lengthy debate on the housing crisis.
The Fine Gael councillor said he was dealing with a family presented with a notice to quit from the house they were renting with HAP. The week before the council meeting, there was just one property available to rent in Clonmel. The two-bedroom house with a monthly rent of €1,400 had attracted 70 expressions of interest.
The next step for this family was emergency accommodation but there was a real lack of this accommodation available. He said it was a real crisis.
“At the rate property owners are leaving the market, I think there is going to be an influx of families traditionally (housed) on HAP presenting as homeless. I am talking of families of two to three children. There is no alternative for them.”
He confessed he was “really struggling” emotionally as a public representative to know what to do to help these families and asked for advice from the council.
Workers & Unemployment Action Group Cllr Pat English from Clonmel said he was also very concerned about the number of people presenting for homeless services, particularly in his hometown where families are finding it impossible to find accommodation.
As previously reported in The Nationalist, he highlighted how there were a number of families with two and three children currently living in a hotel after getting notices to leave. “It’s criminal in my mind,” declared Cllr English, who also spoke of other local homeless families either sleeping in a car or staying with friends.
He said the number of landlords leaving the rental market was having a serious impact on the Long Term Leasing Scheme. The amount of houses taken out of this scheme in the last nine months was “astronomical”.
He said the local authority needed a “serious plan” of social housing building and asked for the council to request the Department of Housing to designate Tipperary’s larger towns as Rent Pressure Zones. “To rent a house in Clonmel now costs between €1,000 and €1,400. That is two mortgages. How is anyone going to get a house,” he asked.
Clonmel’s Cllr Richie Molloy highlighted how he was dealing a family of up to eight people, who had been on the old Clonmel Borough Council housing list and renting a private house with the help of HAP for years. That morning they received notice that there will be court proceedings if they don’t vacate the house. He said receiving the HAP information pack from the council was no use as the properties just aren’t there.
“I just came back from England where I saw a lot of people sleeping in tents. I think we are facing that in this county if something isn’t done,” he warned.
Cllr Roger Kennedy said the problem was not just in Clonmel, it also applied to Cashel, Tipperary Town and rural areas. He remembered it was not too many years ago since the councils and Government were being lambasted for too many houses in the country with ghost estates of empty homes after builders went bust. Now they were in the opposite situation where there were very few builders and those that are there are wary of investing.
Director of Services Sinead Carr responded that on the social housing side, the council has always exceeded its building targets and has submitted proposals to build 1,125 homes, much higher than the target 864 social housing units set for it for the next five years. She explained the real issue was the lack of private housing supply at the moment. A year ago they had an average of 11 housing units per week available for HAP recipients. That was now down to five units a week. There had been a hold off on evictions and notices to quit for two years due to the pandemic and this had now ended. Most of the private landlords in the county were not institutional landlords. Many owned one or two private properties and with the rise in property prices they wanted to get out.
Ms Carr said the council was “very actively” engaging with the Department of Housing in terms of taking steps to deal with the crisis. The Department has agreed to give the council more flexibility in buying houses.
The council was also working with the Peter McVerry Trust in providing Own Front Door housing units for homeless people in the county.
She said the council could write to the Department of Housing and request Rent Protection Zone designation but she pointed out that there were certain criteria that towns needed to meet in order to qualify for this designation.