The purpose of the rent supplement scheme is to provide short-term income support to assist with reasonable accommodation costs of eligible people living in private rented accommodation who are unable to provide for their accommodation costs from their own resources. The overall aim is to provide short term assistance, and not to act as an alternative to the other social housing schemes operated by the Exchequer.
The average number of claimants on the rent supplement scheme for 2014 to date in payment is approximately 76,200 with an average annualised cost to the State of €4,450 representing €344 million which has been provided for the scheme in 2014.
Waterford, represents 2% of the total recipient base with approximately 1,400 tenancies currently in receipt of rent supplement. At an average annual cost of €3,000, total forecast rent supplement costs for Waterford will be in region of €4.2 million.
The scheme’s cost per tenancy and related volume of recipients clearly suggests that the Department has a duty of care to ensure the legitimacy of tenancies presenting to the scheme. This includes not only verifying the existence of a tenancy, but the amount of rent required and an assessment of a person's means.
The timescale for determining applications for rent supplement is dependent, among other things, on the availability of the required information, such as confirmation of a Housing Needs Assessment (HNA) by the relevant Local Authority, where applicable; details of the applicant’s income and bank statements; and verification of the tenancy arrangements. Some aspects of the application process are inevitably time-consuming and delays can occur where investigations such as home visits or third party evidence are required. As outlined to the Deputy in response to parliamentary question 40164 on 21 October 2014, when the necessary information required to process an application is provided to the Department, a rent supplement claim will be processed within a short timeframe, approximately 5 to 10 days.
In the first six months of 2014, a total of 488 applications for rent supplement were registered in Waterford. An analysis of those claims currently still open indicates that 19% were processed and approved within 10 days of registration and 29% took more than 3 months to be processed and approved due to the investigation process and lack of required documentation. An additional 16% are awaiting decision, but cannot be approved as the Department is still waiting on information from the customer to enable a decision to be made.
