Plan to sell more homes with tenants in place
As a way of preventing homelessness through evictions, Eoghan Murphy wants to encourage owners of rental properties to put houses and apartments on the market with tenants in situ, which is common-place in the commercial sector.
Focus Ireland, who have been continuously campaigning for such a measure, said if an amendment brought forward by the housing charity in December 2016 had been passed it would have prevented at least 250 families and over 500 children from becoming homeless last year.
With the latest figures showing there were 1,408 homeless families in December, Mr Murphy has organised a second housing summit in Dublin today, during which local authorities will have to set out their building projections of social houses for the coming year.
Government has set a target of 3,800 new social homes which will be built by local authorities and approved housing bodies in 2018. However, they failed to meet targets last year, building just 2,245 units of 2,434 promised.
Mr Murphy said: “I have concerns for every family and individual who are experiencing this crisis in their lives and homelessness and they are experiencing it through no fault of their own.”
The minister said he had spoken with the CEOs of the main NGOs in December around further preventative measures that might be taken and is now exploring these suggestions.
“I have been discussing certain issues with the Minister for Finance around the selling of properties with tenants in situ rather than vacant possession to see if things can be done in that area because it does happen on the commercial side, we know that commercial properties would be sold with a tenant in situ, why can’t we more of it happening on the private side and on the residential side as well?
“So those things are being discussed, because I do recognise that as we look to 2018 that all the work that we are doing this year to continue to fix the broken housing system we are going to have to look at prevention and I do hear that from the voluntary sector and I do recognise that,” he said.
Focus Ireland advocacy manager Roughan Mac Namara said the charity has been calling for an end to evictions of tenants in buy-to-let properties that were being sold, but said that Government had opposed this claiming it must balance tenants’ rights with property rights.
Mr Mac Namara said: “We strongly believe this holds no water as how can it be balancing rights when a family or individual paying their rent every week — with a tenancy — can be forced out on the street if the property is being sold or repossessed? It is not ‘balancing rights’ it is clearly putting property rights ahead of the rights of tenants.”
Threshold said 30% of termination queries received last year were related to tenants who had been given notice because the landlord was selling the property.
