LIMERICK Sinn Féin TD Maurice Quinlivan has accused Housing Minister James Brown of “knowingly and willingly pushing ever more adults and children into homelessness”.
Quinlivan’s comments were made in response to the Minister’s announcement that there will be no additional funding for the Tenant-in-Situ scheme in 2025.
He also alleged that, earlier this year, the Minister also introduced “significant restrictions” to the scheme and “slashed” funding for the homeless prevention programme.
According to the Limerick politician, local authorities are now running out of funding under the scheme and many purchases that would have concluded have now fallen through, leaving hundreds of adults and children at “imminent risk of homelessness”.
“In August, the Minister allocated an additional €50m to the social housing acquisition programme. It is estimated that €3 of this will go to Limerick. This funding is nowhere near enough to ensure that our councils, including Limerick, can prevent people from becoming homeless and to get people out of emergency accommodation more quickly,” Deputy Quinlivan hit out.
He said that the Housing Minister “confirmed that councils will not be allowed to determine how best to spend this modest increase in funding”.
“Instead, the Minister is dictating that the funding must only be used for vacant acquisitions for larger families and single people trapped in emergency accommodation. Crucially this means that councils will not be allowed to use any of this funding for homeless prevention tenant-in-situ purchases, even where this may be a more appropriate approach.”
Deputy Quinlivan added that “while the €50m could assist around 150 households across the State to exit homelessness, it will not address the month on month increases in family homelessness which are being driven by landlords exiting the private rental sector. Minister Browne is knowingly and willingly pushing ever more adults and children into homelessness.”
He suggested that “as the average house price in Limerick was approximately €311,000 in July, the €3m to be allocated to Limerick will help 10 families and, whilst that will be welcome news for those few families, it is paltry when we see the scale of the housing crisis in Limerick”.
Meanwhile, Labour’s housing spokesperson and Limerick TD Conor Sheehan pointed to warnings from the RTB of a surge in evictions, with “over half caused by landlords selling up”.
Deputy Sheehan said the figures show how landlords are exiting the market before new rental rules take effect in March, and warned that the government’s “piecemeal approach is failing renters”.
He called for urgent funding for the Tenant-in-Situ scheme to be reinstated and for renters rights to be strengthened in the upcoming housing policy.
“We have been warning for months that landlords would rush to sell before the new rental rules come into effect in March. By delaying the changes until next March, as predicted, government may have caused a run on landlords leaving the market. What we are seeing now is the reality of those warnings coming true – more families and individuals facing eviction, with little certainty about what will happen next,” Deputy Sheehan said.