Eoin Ó Broin
Ceist:
599. Deputy Eoin Ó Broin asked the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government the number of homes brought into use in 2016 and 2017 under the repair and lease and the buy and renew schemes, in tabular form; the expenditure in each year for each scheme; the number of homes acquired via the Housing Agency in 2017 and to date in 2018; and the cost of these houses in each of these years. [26696/18]
Amharc ar fhreagra
The data requested is currently being compiled and will be provided to the Deputy in accordance with Standing Orders.
The following deferred reply was received under Standing Order 42A
The Repair and Leasing Scheme (RLS), as well as the Buy and Renew Scheme, has been developed to assist private property owners and local authorities or Approved Housing Bodies (AHBs) to harness the accommodation potential that exists in certain vacant dwellings across Ireland. The RLS scheme was only launched on a pilot basis in Waterford and Carlow in October 2016; accordingly, no dwellings were brought into use under the scheme that year.
The scheme was rolled out nationally in February 2017. At the end of 2017, a total of 820 applications had been received under the scheme. Local authorities were engaging with the property owners in relation to 573 properties, 31 agreements for lease had been signed and 9 homes had been delivered and tenanted across 3 local authorities. A detailed breakdown of the RLS scheme data up to end Q4 2017 is available on my Department’s website at the following link:
http://www.housing.gov.ie/housing/social-housing/social-and-affordble/overall-social-housing-provision
.
RLS data for end Q1 2018 is currently being collated and will be available shortly.
Subject to the suitability of the property for social housing, and the agreement of the property owner, the cost of the necessary repairs is met upfront by the local authority or an approved housing body (AHB) using capital funding that is made available by local authorities and recouped to them by my Department. This allows for the property owner to sign-up to a lease arrangement for a length that is linked to the value of the repairs, subject to a minimum of 5 years. The value of the repairs is then offset incrementally against the agreed rental payment made to the landlord by the local authority over a defined period within the lease. My Department recoups the value of these payments to local authorities from funding under the Social Housing Current Expenditure Programme (SHCEP).
2017 Year End RLS Expenditure
|
Local Authority
|
€ Current
|
€ Capital
|
|
Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council
|
€8,809
|
€4,987
|
|
Waterford City and County Council
|
€17,371
|
€191,398
|
|
Wexford County Council
|
€4,009
|
|
|
Total
|
€30,189
|
€196,385
|
My Department introduced the Buy & Renew Scheme in 2017 to facilitate local authorities in acquiring and remediating vacant properties that may be suitable for social housing. During 2017, my Department supported local authorities to purchase 70 such homes, and over €10.6 million was provided to them under the scheme last year. The full cost of these units, including repairs, is estimated to be €14m. I expect that over the course of 2018, further progress will be made in this area as local authorities close sales on properties identified and put in place arrangements for their remediation to
make them available for social housing use.
Under the Housing Agency Acquisition initiative, the Housing Agency has been provided with a fund of €70m in capital funding from the Exchequer, with the specific focus of engaging with banks and investment companies, primarily private equity funds, to acquire some 1,600 properties for social housing over the period to 2020. The properties acquired in this way by the Agency will be offered for sale to Approved Housing Bodies (AHBs) who can access the funding support available under the Capital Advance Leasing Facility (CALF) and the Social Housing Leasing Programme to match loan finance from the Housing Finance Agency (HFA) and other private lenders, and to local authorities for purchase with full capital support. The process of selling properties on to AHBs is underway. As this is a process that can take some time, an innovative Caretaker Lease arrangement has been developed in order to maximise the potential for use of properties acquired by the Agency in the intervening period. This allows the Housing Agency to assign a property to an AHB who can carry out any necessary repairs and liaise with the local authority to tenant the property as soon as possible, in parallel with the onward acquisition through the CALF scheme. This ensures the earliest possible use of the property for social housing.
At the end of 2017, 382 homes were acquired by the Housing Agency at a cost of €68,886,250 (excluding subsequent upgrade costs of some €2m in respect of 152 of these properties). The purchases of a further 22 properties have been closed to date in 2018, at a cost of €3.2m.
