With the demand for additional social housing units delivered at an accelerated pace, initiatives which provide greater efficiency in the delivery of those units are vital. In particular, engaging with banks and investment companies in respect of their vacant/available property portfolios, which normally span a number of local authority jurisdictions, benefits from a national approach. In that context, the Agency currently acts as a central co-ordination body at national level for banks/investors to interact with. This activity began in early 2015 and to date has yielded 172 properties across 29 local authorities at a total value of just over €25m.
It is intended to formalise, extend and support this activity by directly funding the Housing Agency for these acquisitions. As a new initiative identified in Rebuilding Ireland, the Housing Agency is to be provided with capital funding with the specific focus of engaging with banks and investment companies to acquire properties for social housing nationally, thereby increasing social housing delivery.
Under the new acquisitions programme the Housing Agency will use a rotating fund of €70m which will be immediately available in 2017, to acquire vacant properties from banks and private equity investment funds in areas with high levels of social housing demand. In doing this, the Agency will be in close consultation with local authorities to ensure that suitable properties are only purchased in areas where there is a demand for social housing. It is estimated that this mechanism will deliver some 1,600 units over the period to 2020.
Properties purchased by the Agency will be passed on to Approved Housing Bodies and local authorities, who will purchase these units from the Housing Agency utilising loans from the Housing Finance Agency or other lending institutions, remunerated using funding under the Social Housing Current Expenditure Programme (i.e. payment and availability type arrangements), and capital funding, as appropriate. This would allow the Agency's €70m fund to be replenished to purchase more properties.
