Tipperary Council Housing officials gave an upbeat assessment of the housing situation in the county at the emergency council meeting yesterday. The staff say the situation is challenging but they have a proactive approach. The Housing unit now has extra staff and has also restructured the homeless team with a senior coordination group in place to deal with purchasing homes that are subject to a Notice to Quit(NTQ).
Since April last year to date 224 Notices to Quit have been issued in the county. Tipperary Council is urging any tenant with a notice to quit to make contact as soon as possible so that staff will have the entire 6 month notice period to find new accommodation. The State is rolling out a number of new schemes to help tenants and this will also include tenants with a NTQ even if they are not approved for social housing. The Council has purchased 47 homes via the tenant in situ and is considering purchasing 35 additional similar properties in cases where a notice to quit has been issued. The council assesses each situation individually and in some cases the property may not be for sale. Of the 142 properties not purchased the council or tenant have found solutions already resulting in there being 46 live NTQs on hand. The council has 74 bed spaces for emergency accommodation in B & Bs in Cahir, Cashel, Roscrea and Clonmel in addition to transitional bed spaces in Novas, Cuan Saor(Clonmel), Ascend(Nenagh) and at Matthew Bourke House run by Thurles Lions club. At present Tipperary county council has a number of “own front door” emergency units comprising 15 bed spaces, this will increase to 43 bed spaces in July. As of March 29th there were 15 single people and 5 families being housed in emergency accommodation because they are currently homeless.
The council expects to deliver 2,010 new housing units under its current construction programme running between 2022 to 2026. In addition, the council is to work with developers to help support the construction of more social and especially affordable housing in the county. At present planning permission is in place in Tipperary for approximately 2,000 housing units for which construction works have not commenced.
