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Social and Affordable Housing

Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 20 February 2019

Wednesday, 20 February 2019

Questions (28, 62)

Richard Boyd Barrett

Question:

28. Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett asked the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government the reports he is considering changing the rules in relation to offers of accommodation to social housing applicants which may result in an applicant being suspended from the list if they refuse two offers of accommodation; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [8178/19]

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Jan O'Sullivan

Question:

62. Deputy Jan O'Sullivan asked the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government if the plans to change the policy on offers of social housing to require a five year wait for a further offer if two are refused will be clarified; his views on whether some flexibility is required in circumstances in which there are valid reasons for offers being refused; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [8243/19]

View answer

Oral answers (22 contributions)

One of the most unpalatable aspects of the shameful housing and homelessness crisis is the attempt by officials and by Government to blame the people who are the victims of the housing crisis. We saw an instance of that with Mr. Owen Keegan's comments at the weekend when he said that homeless accommodation was somehow "attractive" to people. Another aspect of this is the suggestion that has been mooted that people will be suspended from the housing list if, for overwhelmingly legitimate reasons, they refuse particular offers. Is this true and if so, how can the Minister justify it?

I propose to take Questions Nos. 28 and 62 together.

The current position in relation to the refusal by households of offers of social housing dwellings is set down in regulation 12 of the social housing allocation regulations 2011, which were made under section 22 of the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2009.

Under regulation 12, a household that refuses two reasonable offers of social housing tenancies in any 12 month period, other than an offer made under the choice based letting procedure, will not receive any further offers from any local authority for a period of one year from the date of the second refusal. An offer is deemed to be reasonable where the dwelling concerned would, in the opinion of the authority, meet the housing needs of the household and, except in an emergency, is located in an area of choice specified by the household. From my engagement with the local authority sector, it has become apparent that the current 12-month sanction is not operating in a manner that counters sufficiently the potential for households on the waiting list to turn down reasonable housing offers. The refusal of offers can have a serious impact on the efforts by local authorities to manage their social housing letting process effectively and efficiently, lengthening the period ultimately required to complete lettings or relettings and resulting in a loss of essential differential rent revenue for extended periods.

For these reasons, I will soon be proposing to amend the regulations to provide that a household that refuses two reasonable offers in any 12 month period, other than an offer made under the choice based letting procedure, will not receive any further offers from any local authority for a period of five years.

The latter period will not be reckonable subsequently for the purposes of determining the household’s relative priority for another social housing tenancy. Having regard to the overall level of demand for social housing, I am satisfied that the change proposed is a measured step, it is ultimately fair to all households on local authority social housing waiting lists and it will be supportive of the work of local authorities to improve the level of efficiency in the use of their social housing stock.

That is an absolute disgrace but it is typical of a Government trying to divert attention away from its failure to provide public and affordable housing and to essentially blame the victims. I will take one of the administrative areas the Minister is talking about. My administrative area stretches from Little Bray to Sandyford. Let us imagine someone has been on the housing list for 15 years, their kids go to school in Shankill and they get offered somewhere in Sandyford. All their family network, such as their granny who looks after the kids, is in Shankill, and the schools the kids are in are in Shankill. They are told they are getting an offer of a house in Stepaside or Sandyford. They say they are desperate for a place but they cannot take that offer because they would have to uproot all their kids, they would not have the family network, they do not have a car and there are no transport links. This happens all the time. In many cases, houses are substandard, they are too small and there are real problems but out of desperation local authorities will offer them to people even though they are not suitable for particular families. The Government will then punish people by taking them off the list for five years. It is absolutely outrageous.

The first thing to say is that this is part of a suite of measures that we are working on to help people who are in emergency accommodation to get out of emergency accommodation and to help local authorities manage the social housing stock efficiently. There are more than 70,000 people waiting for their home. These homes are being built now and we want to make sure there are no unnecessary or unreasonable delays for those families to get into their homes. What we are talking about here are not refusals for legitimate reasons, as the Deputy said. That is not what we are talking about. There is great flexibility with the local authorities in terms of working with families and individuals to help them into their social housing homes and in terms of determining what is the best type of home for them. It is not for legitimate reasons. It is for reasons that are not seen to be acceptable by the authority which is responsible for helping families into homes and managing that stock of social housing. We are talking about three areas of choice where people can choose to have their home, and I can provide a detailed map of the geographic size of those areas for the Deputy. We are talking about a second refusal. The local authority has offered one house which it deems to be a perfectly good house for that person to move into but that has been refused. The local authority has then offered a second house which it deems to be perfectly good for that household to move into but that has been refused. In that instance, based on the feedback I have received from local authorities, they believe that rather than just a 12-month suspension, a five-year suspension would be more suitable. We are not talking about a large number of cases so I do not know why the Deputy is getting so frustrated and concerned about this. The local authorities deem it necessary to ensure they can more efficiently use their housing stock in the interests of those people who have been waiting too long to get into their homes.

The Minister is not living in the real world of people who are looking for housing in local authority areas. I have a similar situation to Deputy Boyd Barrett where three areas of choice can be ticked on a form and in some cases they are very broad areas. They stretch for kilometres. By and large, we are talking about families in situations where they do not have their own car and I am not sure about Dublin but in Limerick there certainly are no connecting busses. They have to get their children to school and there may not be a direct bus. While I have the greatest of respect for local authority officials, what they might deem to be a fair and legitimate offer may not be practical for the family concerned and it is too inflexible to put people back for five years. One year can be difficult enough for a family that is in a desperate situation but I genuinely do not believe that people are refusing offers for flimsy reasons. Maybe there is a very small number who do but certainly when it comes to the people I deal with, generally speaking, if they are refusing an offer of a local authority house, having been on a waiting list for a number of years, they have really genuine reasons for doing so. If there are people abusing the system, it can be dealt with even with the current regulations but it is very harsh to extend it to five years.

The local authority is the entity which best understands what the needs of the people on the housing list are and what type of home they need to move into.

They have great flexibility. They have flexibility within the current policy and flexibility within the changes to be able to work with those families to get the best home. We are talking about those people who are refusing accommodation for spurious reasons - that is who we are trying to target here.

How many are there? Is it ten, 20 or 50?

The current policy is two refusals and the person is suspended for a year. What we are talking about is extending the period of time to act as a deterrent to people who are not accepting houses for reasons that are not seen to be valid. We are not talking about the challenges some families face that require a very specific type of accommodation, with the local authority working with them on a first offer, second offer and third offer. They have the flexibility to continue beyond two offers - of course they do. This is where the local authority deems that the second refusal was not on legitimate grounds. Under the current policy, people are then suspended for 12 months but, under the new proposals, which will be coming in with a range of other proposals, it will be for five years. I think that is acceptable based on the feedback I have from those local authority areas. However, the flexibility remains. This is not about families who have a legitimate challenge in trying to find a home to meet their needs in their area of choice.

If the number is small, where the hell did this come from? I will tell the Minister where it came from. It came from a rotten prejudice that was expressed by Owen Keegan at the weekend in his disgraceful interview with The Sunday Business Post.

The Deputy should refrain from naming people.

He said it publicly.

He may well have but we have to abide by the rules here.

He said homeless accommodation was attractive to people and was a magnet, an absolutely outrageous statement he made in public, an insult to people who are stuck in homelessness. This betrays a rotten attitude. If it is a small number, where did it come from? It is to divert attention away from the real problem. One year is enough punishment. I have met people who are faced with that one year, who are crying and coming into my office to say they do not want to refuse, that they have been waiting for a house for years but that they cannot accept the house because it is completely impossible for them, yet they are under pressure to do so. I understand why officials are putting people under pressure because they are desperate to just tick the boxes. The people who have been waiting years on housing lists, who have real human family circumstances, should not be put under that pressure and should not be punished in this way. It is outrageous.

I call Deputy Jan O'Sullivan. All Members should refrain from mentioning names.

What we are trying to do is to get the Minister to change his mind. I ask the Minister to define what he means by "flexibility". As I read this, there is no flexibility and once a person refuses a second home, they go back five years. I cannot see any flexibility in that. The Minister needs to go back and redefine what he is talking about if it is the case that people who refuse two offers then have to wait five years. We are talking about people who are desperate and who only refuse because they know that if they accept the third offer, they are stuck in this unsuitable place for the rest of their lives and it is not going to work for them. They are not going to refuse for spurious reasons. I urge the Minister to find a way of dealing with this whereby, after two refusals, the local authority must bring the people in and discuss with them why they have not been able to accept the two offers. Given the pressure local authority officials are under, I do not think they are going to show flexibility. Instead, they are going to say, "You have refused and that is it. We have a load of other people to deal with." That is not fair on people and their individual situations.

I urge the Minister not to proceed with this draconian measure. I urge him to come before the housing committee and have a reasoned discussion with us about this because he is not being given the full information. There are many examples, which we can all cite from our constituencies, where people turn down offers of accommodation, for example, because they have been offered accommodation outside the catchment area for children who are in schools with special needs, and the local authorities have deemed that to be acceptable. We have had cases in some local authorities where families with children have been offered one-bedroom accommodation and the local authorities deemed that to be acceptable. We have had occasions where people have been offered accommodation not only far away from where they currently live but away from public transport networks and vital supports, which is a particular problem for working single mothers who need access to family accommodation.

The Minister has this wrong. I have no difficulty if somebody for frivolous reasons rejects two offers and receives a punishment - that is not a problem. However, there is more to this than the Minister is being told. I urge him to hold back and to come to committee. The crucial point is that choice-based letting fixes this problem for the overwhelming majority of offers, yet only 16 local authorities are using that system and many of them are not using it properly. Rather than punishing families, many of whom in our experience have legitimate reasons for rejecting offers the local authority feels are appropriate, we need to see a different approach. The Minister should come and talk to us, sit down and engage, and listen before he proceeds. Five years is draconian and the information the Minister is being given by the managers is not the complete picture.

Local authority elected members have to approve the scheme of lettings. Will this override decisions of local authority officers or elected members or is there a recommendation to that effect?

The Minister has one minute to reply.

As Deputies got extra time, I would like some extra time as well because it is an important issue. I have no problem with coming before the Oireachtas joint committee, as I do regularly, and I will come in on this issue as well. We have an engagement coming up which will facilitate that. This does not affect choice-based letting, which is working very well where it is working, and we want it to work in more areas. I am glad Deputy Ó Broin accepts that people are refusing accommodation for spurious reasons, and, in that case, that there should be some sort of deterrent and some sort of consequence. When people reject a social housing home for spurious reasons, the more than 70,000 people Deputy Boyd Barrett is talking about, who have been waiting for so long, have to wait even longer.

Deputy Ó Broin said I do not know the full facts. With respect, many Deputies come to me with cases which seem to be genuine hardship cases, and they bring them to me for genuine reasons, but when we actually dig into them, there is more to them than meets the eye. We have to try to find a balanced approach. The current policy is two refusals and a suspension for 12 months. This is about lengthening the suspension period to make it act as a proper deterrent for those who are doing this for spurious reasons, not those who have legitimate difficulties in finding accommodation that will meet their needs. That is what we are talking about here. The flexibility already exists in the local authority area. The local authorities have come to me saying they need more of a deterrent for those people who are refusing accommodation for spurious reasons. If the Deputies do not think we should be rejecting people for using spurious reasons, and if they have an idea how we can better deal with the situation-----

Choice-based letting.

That is what we are rolling out. There are more than 70,000 people waiting for a social housing home. Some of those people are being kept from moving into their homes because people ahead of them in the queue are saying "No" for reasons that are not legitimate. That is what we are trying to deal with. This is happening with a suite of other reforms that will be announced next month.

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