Report calls for end to successor tenancies and tenant purchase scheme

[Brendan Burgess]

An interesting report here from two UCD academics

The Future of Council Housing

The two big recommendations

End the tenant purchase scheme
End successor tenancies (i.e. the ability to inherit a council housing tenancy).

RECOMMENDATIONS

Minor management and administrative changes
Require local authorities to ring fence income from rents to spend on council housing.
Remove maximum rents from council housing rent determination schemes.
Allow for the compulsory deduction of council housing rents from social welfare payments.
Regularly conduct comprehensive condition surveys of the council housing stock.
Review the Local Government Accounting Code of Practice to bring it into line with international standards
of transparency and disclosure for councils’ housing operations.
Value the council housing stock and record valuations in local authorities’ accounts.
Condense and streamline the Department of Housing’s approval process for new council housing
developments.

Medium scale reforms
Suspend the tenant purchase scheme for council housing.
Remove the availability of successor tenancies (i.e. the ability to inherit a council housing tenancy).
Build smaller council housing units to enable tenants to downsize.
Enable urban local authorities to keep more property tax revenue to spend on council housing.
Use income from property taxes on council housing to establish sinking funds.
Extend the shared services model to organise some council housing services on a regional basis.


Radical restructuring of arrangements for funding council housing
Link rents to the cost of council housing provision not to tenants incomes. Make HAP available to council
tenants who can’t afford to pay these ‘cost rents’.
Enable local authorities to borrow some or all of the costs of council housing provision. These loans would
be remunerated using cost rents and the proceeds of property taxes.

 

[Brendan Burgess]

It would be much simpler just to end life tenancies.

Stop treating council houses as lotto wins.

Any tenant renting privately is subject to a fixed duration tenancy.

Likewise, the state should simply provide leases for a maximum of 5 years.

If the family still met the housing needs assessment and was working in the area and paying their rent, then it could be renewed. Otherwise it would be ended and the house allocated to someone with a greater need.

Between 1990 and 2016, 43% of the 82,869 council houses built during that period were sold to tenants, in certain instances at up to 60% discount on market value.

This is outrageous. It is a huge cost to the taxpayer and it's a huge reduction in the number of social housing units available.

Brendan

 

[Seagull]

As part of your 5 year review - see what size house the family need. If they have a 4 bed house and only 1 child is still at home, move the family to a smaller house.