Report shows County County Council's southern division fell short of its 2023 housing target

APRROXIMATELY €103m was spent on housing in the southern division of Cork County Council during 2023, including almost €10m on affordable housing, councillors have heard.

The local authority’s director of housing Maurice Manning presented his report at this week’s meeting.

The councillors were told that the target for the 2022-6 period for house building in the division was 3,198 housing units and that 369 had been delivered during 2023, significantly below the target of 622 units which had been envisaged. In 2022 the target had been 560 and 561 units had been delivered.

Councillors were also given an account of the various different housing developments underway in the four different municipalities — Macroom/Millstreet, Cobh, Carrigaline and East Cork.

Progress

Progress was being made on a number of developments such as the Sleaveen project in Macroom, where an eight-unit social housing scheme is being built and in Mogeely where two new two bedroom units have been completed and conveyancing is now underway. Other developments are at various stages of progress in Youghal, Knockraha, and Carrigaline.

“We currently have 235 social housing units at various stages of development on our own land, eight at preliminary stage, 124 at design stage, 59 at tender stage, and 44 at construction,” said Mr Manning.

The housing director also gave a breakdown of the number of vacant council houses in south Cork — 36 of the authority’s 3,236 units in the four municipalities were deemed vacant. Of these 36, three units were under repair, six were the subject of tender processes, and the remaining 27 were under offer or tenants were being selected for them.

Details were also given during the presentation by the housing director of the number of local authority home loans processed by Cork County Council during 2023. 

The authority received 143 valid applications, 52 of which were from the southern division. The number of applications approved for home loans was 61 with 22 of these being in the southern division. There were 49 outright refusals, 16 of which were in the southern municipalities while 13 applications across the county are still being processed. The average amount of the loan being approved across the county is €171,427 while the average amount of the loans in the southern division was €163,545.

Homelessness

Homelessness in the county was also dealt with in the report and details were given of the numbers of families and single people who were either prevented from entering homelessness or who were found homes by the authority.

Thirty-one families who had been homeless were allocated homes either by the council or by an approved housing body (AHB) with 46 single people escaping homelessness to council or AHB properties. A little more than half of the families, 16, and 26 singles, were located in the southern division.

Twenty-five families exited homelessness via Housing Assistance Payments (HAP); 55 singles and a further five families in Direct Provision were found homes through HAP also.

In total 29 families and 16 single people across the county were prevented from entering homelessness thanks to HAP.

The report also disclosed that 43 families and 82 single people were in emergency accommodation across the county with 13 families and 31 single people in such accommodation for more than 12 months.