'The landlord is getting impatient': Cork renter claims stress of waiting for house to be purchased under tenant-in-situ led to stay in hospital

A Cork renter who is waiting for his family’s home to be purchased under the tenant-in-situ scheme has told The Echo he ended up in hospital due to the stress of a process which has now taken a year.

The scheme allows local authorities to purchase privately owned homes where tenants are at risk of eviction, ensuring they can remain in their homes as social housing tenants.

The scheme has been stalled in Cork city since April due to what the council called “insufficient funding” from Government.

One man said his family went through the tenant-in-situ scheme process last August and got a confirmation at the end of January that the council had put a deposit on the house, which went to ‘sale agreed’.

He told The Echo: “We’re still in the same situation, we were told at the end of May by council that the situation was sorted and the house would be bought, which was confirmed to me by local TDs. But since then, we’ve heard nothing.

“The house has still not been paid for, and the auctioneer says that the landlord is getting very impatient and says if it hasn’t been bought by August, he’ll put it on the open market in September.

“I completely understand this from the landlord, he’s been very understanding and patient, but it’s three to four months since they said this was sorted, and a full year since the whole process started.”

Local TDs in Cork have confirmed that multiple people who were in his situation whereby their home had gone to the sale agreed stage are now living in emergency accommodation due to the delays with the scheme, and their landlords are not waiting as long as this particular man’s.

“We still don’t have confirmation of what’s going on, we can’t do anything to the house because we don’t know are we going to have to move out,” said the man.

“I ended up in hospital a couple of months back because of the stress of it.”

It comes as housing minister James Browne this week announced the allocation for an additional €696m capital funding recently approved by Government to “help address homelessness at the community level”.

Part of this announcement was €50m funding for second-hand acquisitions, including tenant-in-situ scheme, on top of the €325m total allocated for 2025.

It is unclear how much, if any, of this top-up funding is to be made available to Cork City Council, which advised earlier this year that the €20m it was provided for 2025 was insufficient to even cover last year’s costs, not to mind acquiring new properties this year.