Take offer of housing or get struck off has to be implemented

borderlinemeath

This makes me really angry. I'm certain that there's plenty of people on the social housing list that would jump at the chance to be given a home, yet this article makes reference to serial offenders that turn down a number of properties. Use it or lose it, you shouldn't get carte blanche to live where you want, the average homebuyer or renter tends to have to compromise on area based on price so why should social housing recipients get the house they want funded by the taxpayer?


http://www.independent.ie/business/personal-finance/property-mortgages/fiasco-as-up-to-half-of-housing-offers-are-rejected-34261067.html

JustTheOne

borderlinemeath wrote: »

This makes me really angry. I'm certain that there's plenty of people on the social housing list that would jump at the chance to be given a home, yet this article makes reference to serial offenders that turn down a number of properties. Use it or lose it, you shouldn't get carte blanche to live where you want, the average homebuyer or renter tends to have to compromise on area based on price so why should social housing recipients get the house they want funded by the taxpayer?


http://www.independent.ie/business/personal-finance/property-mortgages/fiasco-as-up-to-half-of-housing-offers-are-rejected-34261067.html

Yep and then we have the usual rich boy Barret and Paul Murphy giving out about homeless families living in hotels.

Arbiter of Good Taste

I love the reference to "tribal" reasons....I wonder who pulls that stunt:rolleyes:

borderlinemeath

JustTheOne wrote: »

Yep and then we have the usual rich boy Barret and Paul Murphy giving out about homeless families living in hotels.

And no doubt there'll be another article in the indo tomorrow about the poor single mother and children that have been made homeless by "greedy landlords".

JustTheOne

borderlinemeath wrote: »

And no doubt there'll be another article in the indo tomorrow about the poor single mother and children that have been made homeless by "greedy landlords".

Ah yeah every few days there is a sob story until they go on radio and you hear the real reasons their becoming homeless.

athtrasna

Folks can we keep discussion on the accommodation and property aspects please. The thread won't last long if it descends into social housing tenant bashing

Mod

borderlinemeath

athtrasna wrote: »

Folks can we keep discussion on the accommodation and property aspects please. The thread won't last long if it descends into social housing tenant bashing

Mod

Unfortunately the crux of article is the number of social housing tenants refusing to be accomodated. Yes there's a broken system but the SW tenants are more than culpable for playing that system to their advantage. Is it the councils fault? Do they have the power to remove serial refusers from their housing lists? Or does it actually need political reform?

Mrs OBumble

borderlinemeath wrote: »

Is it the councils fault? Do they have the power to remove serial refusers from their housing lists? Or does it actually need political reform?

I understand that councils can put people who refuse three offers down to the bottom of the list again.

Refusal statistics are very manipulable.

Undoubtedly some people unduly refuse a house because it's not exactly what they want.

But it's likely that a few very undesirable properties being refused over and over again have a big impact on the numbers: You can't really blame anyone for refusing to live next to the towns' most well-known drug-dealer etc.

Re "tribal reasons" - I also love the phrase. But from personal experience I know that it's not only people from a community with a nomadic mindset that think like this: some settled people do or don't want to live near particular families and accept or turn down based on this.

hmmm

If priority is governed by need, it strikes me that people aren't very needy if they're turning places down. Is the priority system correct?

Gatling

hmmm wrote: »

If priority is governed by need, it strikes me that people aren't very needy if they're turning places down. Is the priority system correct?

This keeps coming up time and time again a housing crisis and we have houses been refused .

The funny part you can refuse two properties every 12 months and not face actions,

We've seen excuses as gardens not big enough for a large trampoline to one person been on a long holiday in Rome

P. Breathnach

Gatling wrote: »

...
We've seen excuses as gardens not big enough for a large trampoline to one person been on a long holiday in Rome

It's more likely that we hear about such cases than that we hear about the family with two children doing nicely in a school in Ballymun being offered a house in Ballyfermot, or about the woman separated from a violent partner being offered a place three doors away from where he lives.

Yes, I agree with the your implication that refusals on frivolous grounds should result in an applicant being bumped down the list, but where there is a good case for refusing an offer, then the person should not be penalised.

I am sure that it is not generally the case that if one applicant refuses an offer, the accommodation remains vacant; it is offered to the next apparently-suitable applicant. If a property is refused by a number of applicants, then a question has to be raised about the property.

NIMAN

There was a guy in the radio up here in donegal a few months ago, and I think he gave a figure of something like a 40% uptake on house offers. He worked for the housing section of the council.

That's a shocking figure.

There were people turning down a house in a certain town simply cos they wanted a house in another part of the same town, maybe closer to their ma etc. This just can't happen. It might have been a couple of miles away, but yet they are allowed to turn down 2 offers, whilst still having the power to go around moaning about the council not housing them.

The figures would be a lot lower if you were allowed zero refusals. How desperate are you really for a house if you are willing to turn down 2 offers? Not as desperate as some of the lefties are making out.

Gatling

P. Breathnach wrote: »

It's more likely that we hear about such cases than that we hear about the family with two children doing nicely in a school in Ballymun being offered a house in Ballyfermot, or about the woman separated from a violent partner being offered a place three doors away from where he lives.

Yes, I agree with the your implication that refusals on frivolous grounds should result in an applicant being bumped down the list, but where there is a good case for refusing an offer, then the person should not be penalised.

What's wrong with having to move schools it's another example of victimisation as for a violent partner i won't bother ,
So it's ok for working people to have to move but not people refusing perfectly fine properties .
We all can't live around the corner from mammy or our best mates ,

Time to stop looking at victims and people using kids as an excuse if they turn down a house do what they do in London remove you from their duty of care

iguana

Gatling wrote: »

What's wrong with having to move schools it's another example of victimisation as for a violent partner i won't bother ,
So it's ok for working people to have to move but not people refusing perfectly fine properties .
We all can't live around the corner from mammy or our best mates ,

Time to stop looking at victims and people using kids as an excuse if they turn down a house do what they do in London remove you from their duty of care

People should have the right to refuse a property on the grounds of personal safety without penalty. I'd certainly rather live in a hotel with my son for an indefinite period than live in a perfectly nice house nextdoor to a gang member that has been shot at/has had their house shot at/shoots at people/etc. Keeping away from a violent ex is also perfectly reasonable.

seamus

A nationwide system should be implemented. At present you can't apply for housing outside of your local authority area except if can show a link to that area. This is ridiculous. How many people would happily take a home in Co. Kildare but are stuck on the Fingal list?

Open it up, allow anyone to apply anywhere, just giving priority to those in the area at present.

Then operate a CAO-style preference system. You can specify 3 areas in the country you'd like to live, in order of preference. The country is divided into "cells" of like 30,000 people, a bit like voting constituencies and you can apply only to be housed in specific cells. No requests for specific streets or properties. If you turn down a suitable offer you're excluded from that preference.

So if you turn down a third preference, you may still be offered a first or second preference. If you turn down a first preference you're immediately struck off the list.

Obviously there are going to be special cases. People who need to be on a bus route to attend dialysis. Or people who have to refuse a house because it's next door to an ex partner or their sons murderer or something.
But these will be few and far between and can be dealt with by a special case officer who asseses anyone that refuses on special grounds and accepts or rejects that refusal.

borderlinemeath

iguana wrote: »

People should have the right to refuse a property on the grounds of personal safety without penalty. I'd certainly rather live in a hotel with my son for an indefinite period than live in a perfectly nice house nextdoor to a gang member that has been shot at/has had their house shot at/shoots at people/etc. Keeping away from a violent ex is also perfectly reasonable.

The article makes reference to councils impatience with serial offenders, and the ones that refuse based on not liking an area or the particular house. As another poster pointed out, if a council house was located in the immediate vicinity of the local gangland kingpin, it is about the house being the problem, not the tenant. What about somebody who buys a house and the local drug lord moved in next door? They have no comeback or council to fall back on.

Slydice

this again?

I only just looked at the numbers for this last month..

I don't think they've changed..

I added a chart to the last thread discussing it:

NIMAN

Why did a housing officer from Donegal CC say on radio a couple of months back that refusals were at 40%? You think he was lying?

Spanish Eyes

So let's say a person/family is on the RAS or RA scheme in a nice house, nice area.

Then they get an offer of a council house in a different/worse area.

If they don't move they are put to the bottom of the list, is that correct? But why in hell's name would they move if they like where they are? Maybe that's a reason for all the refusals. Private rented accommodation might just suit them.

Anyway, being put to the bottom of the list solves nothing. The taxpayer is still subsidising the original accommodation that they refused to move from.

I don't know what the solution is, but I doubt if anyone can be FORCED to move, there might be a challenge on human rights grounds or something.

Mad altogether.

borderlinemeath

Spanish Eyes wrote: »

So let's say a person/family is on the RAS or RA scheme in a nice house, nice area.

Then they get an offer of a council house in a different/worse area.

On applying for housing they choose 3 areas where they would like to be housed.

If they don't move they are put to the bottom of the list, is that correct? But why in hell's name would they move if they like where they are? Maybe that's a reason for all the refusals. Private rented accommodation might just suit them.

Homebuyers and renters paying their own way have to move to areas that they can afford and usually they aren't their most favourite area but a compromise based on affordability. Why should heavily subsidized SW housing recipients be treated any differently?

Anyway, being put to the bottom of the list solves nothing. The taxpayer is still subsidising the original accommodation that they refused to move from.

I don't know what the solution is, but I doubt if anyone can be FORCED to move, there might be a challenge on human rights grounds or something.

Mad altogether.

Nobody can be forced to move. But when you're living heavily subsidized off the state, as the saying goes, you shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth. Use the opportunity you're given to have some security of tenure rather than at the behest of a private landlord who can dictate far more terms and conditions than the local council.

Toots

borderlinemeath wrote: »

As another poster pointed out, if a council house was located in the immediate vicinity of the local gangland kingpin, it is about the house being the problem, not the tenant. What about somebody who buys a house and the local drug lord moved in next door? They have no comeback or council to fall back on.

Yes, but I'm assuming when the person bought the house, it was a nice house in a nice area, and that's why they bought it. Why should somebody be made move into the house just because they're on the housing list?

borderlinemeath

Toots wrote: »

Yes, but I'm assuming when the person bought the house, it was a nice house in a nice area, and that's why they bought it. Why should somebody be made move into the house just because they're on the housing list?

As pointed out earlier if the house is the "serial offender" rather than the tenant then that shouldn't effect the status of the tenant. If a particular house has been refused a number of times it should be flagged up and removed from the database until such a time it's feasible for use, or even used as an emergency short term unit. Reasons such as not being around the corner from family/friends, or if it's not as convenient as their current rental shouldn't be entertained.

Mrs OBumble

NIMAN wrote: »

Why did a housing officer from Donegal CC say on radio a couple of months back that refusals were at 40%? You think he was lying?

No, I don't think he was lying.

But Donegal is somewhat different to lots of the rest of the country due to the remoteness of many, many places.

Say there was a need for council housing in Killybegs (picking one place off the map) - so the council acquired a house there and operated it successfully for a few years. Then a tenant died / left.

Possibly there's no one in the village who is currently on the housing list. So they start offering it to people on the list from other villages. Some will be on welfare - but many people who qualify for council housing are low-paid workers. The rent may be cheap, but the cost of petrol to drive to a job some distance away (eg 65km each way to Letterkenny) totally skews things.


There's also something in the back of my mind about Dongeal being one of the places where developers gave the council allocation in kind (ie of houses they'd built) rather than cash. Problem is, uninsulated places that are fine holiday cottages in summer are pretty miserable to live in during winter. (I'm not 100% sure it's one of the places - or if the work has been done to bring them all up to standard now - but suspect it may be a factor.)

Uncle Ben

You need to be on the council housing list to qualify for rent allowance. So as part of that application you must nominate 3 locations within the authority for housing also. I know plenty of vacant local authority housing which no one wants because those same people are already housed in 4 bed bungalows on half acres being paid for by rental allowance.
A solution would be for the local authorities to handle those people looking after council and social housing and let those who want rental allowance state their case to dept of social protection.

borderlinemeath

Mrs OBumble wrote: »

No, I don't think he was lying.

But Donegal is somewhat different to lots of the rest of the country due to the remoteness of many, many places.

Donegal isn't even the highest refusal rate, so it's not all down to distance. In fact DunLaoire/Rathdown is the same refusal rate at 42%. Why are houses being refused in one of the nicest areas in Dublin??

These counties are the worst offenders:

Cork 49%
Waterford 46%
Leitrim 42%
Donegal 42%
Dun Laoire/Rathdown 42%
Roscommon 41.7%
Monaghan 38.6%
Galway 34.8%

iguana

Uncle Ben wrote: »

You need to be on the council housing list to qualify for rent allowance. So as part of that application you must nominate 3 locations within the authority for housing also. I know plenty of vacant local authority housing which no one wants because those same people are already housed in 4 bed bungalows on half acres being paid for by rental allowance.
A solution would be for the local authorities to handle those people looking after council and social housing and let those who want rental allowance state their case to dept of social protection.

Or maybe rent allowance should only be temporary and once you turn down your third offer of a house (for reasons not of personal safety) you don't just go to the bottom of the list, you also lose your rent allowance. The state may have a duty to provide subsidised housing for those who need it, but as long as the house is safe and fit for purpose isn't that enough? The private rental sector should be no more than emergency back up social housing, not an ongoing solution.

El_Dangeroso

The system is seriously messed up. It needs root and branch reform, that's clear.

I don't blame people for refusing houses if they think they can get something better down the line. I would do the exact same in there situation and I'm lucky enough to never have required rent allowance.

I really think it's very easy to spout the divisive narrative about the lazy underclass but I think a lot more useful would be working on making the system as equitable and fair as we can.

the_syco

Toots wrote: »

Why should somebody be made move into the house just because they're on the housing list?

Because they're not the ones paying the rent?

RobbingBandit

I am waiting two years on the priority list to be housed my claim was made on medical grounds. Last month I found out I'm losing my sight due to medical complications. I'm currently stuck in a ****hole bedsit with absolutely no movement on my placing on the priority list. I would kill to be offered a proper place to live so I can get on with my life or whats left of it.

jimmycrackcorm

RobbingBandit wrote:

I am waiting two years on the priority list to be housed my claim was made on medical grounds. Last month I found out I'm losing my sight due to medical complications. I'm currently stuck in a ****hole bedsit with absolutely no movement on my placing on the priority list. I would kill to be offered a proper place to live so I can get on with my life or whats left of it.

My wife's friend turned down a nice newly built apartment because it was in a social development and she didn't think she felt she fitted that category despite claiming single mothers allowance while her husband also lived with her.

NIMAN

I remember the donegal housing officer mentioning letterkenny as an example.

Letterkenny is a fairly large town, with loads on the list. Yet loads were turning down houses that were still in letterkenny, but maybe a couple of miles of where they wanted to live

There has to be a little bit of leeway by house hunters too if the lists are to work.

athtrasna

jimmycrackcorm wrote: »

My wife's friend turned down a nice newly built apartment because it was in a social development and she didn't think she felt she fitted that category despite claiming single mothers allowance while her husband also lived with her.

Social welfare fraud can be reported here https://www.welfare.ie/en/pages/secure/reportfraud.aspx

Butters1979

Mrs OBumble wrote: »

But it's likely that a few very undesirable properties being refused over and over again have a big impact on the numbers: You can't really blame anyone for refusing to live next to the towns' most well-known drug-dealer etc.

This is actually a really good point. Yes we need to look at serial refuser’s and come up with a system where they use it or lose it after a few attempts. Beggars cannot be choosers and all that. But it would also be interesting to look at specific properties that keep getting refused and consider if there is a genuine issue with the property that may need to be addressed.

We should look at both sides of the refusals.

Cuddlesworth

borderlinemeath wrote: »

In fact DunLaoire/Rathdown is the same refusal rate at 42%. Why are houses being refused in one of the nicest areas in Dublin?

Just guessing here, but could it be the exact opposite problem to Donegal. The only houses left are the ones that nobody will take for a very specific reason. Hence the high rate of refusals as the same small number of houses get offered over a over again.

keane2097

I never understand the outrage at stuff like this.

If people are deciding the houses they are being offered are so unsuitable for them that they're willing to stay living in a hotel room with their families for an unknown further length of time then I'm willing to believe most of them. The alternative seems to be believing that these people have it so good in their temporary accommodation that they're refusing to move into acceptable houses in a calculated attempt to annoy working class people.

In any case, who do the people freaking out about this think is being inconvenienced? If a person decides to refuse the offer of a house it literally makes no difference to anyone bar themselves. They refuse the house so are stuck in temporary accommodation for longer than they might have been, while the next person on the list gets to move into a house instead of them.

The number of people on the housing list decreases by exactly the same number regardless of whether or not we force people to accept the first offer of a house they get or whether we allow them to decide a place isn't suitable, so why does it matter whether family 1 on the list says 'no' allowing family 2 on the list to move in?

<mod snip>

hmmm

keane2097 wrote: »

It really seems the issue here is peasants needing to know their place with some people.

The issue here is that the media keeps spinning stories about the "homelessness crisis" and how we need to build a 100,000 social houses, while at the same time we find out that many of the people on the social housing list are happy to turn down multiple offers of housing. Meanwhile we have the poster above who is losing their sight seemingly well down the priority list, and who hasn't been offered anything.

Who is deciding the priorities, and why should people pay tax to provide free houses for people who turn their noses up at them.

keane2097

It comes down to what your opinion of something like this is I believe:

If someone is offered a house that's pretty nice in, say, Harold's Cross and they decide to turn it down for some reason or other because they would prefer a house in Drumcondra, and are willing to stay in temporary accommodation for six months in the hope of getting one there. The house is then offered to the next family on the list, who are delighted to get the house in Harold's Cross and move in straight away.

The above scenario to my mind is totally grand. Some family was going to move into the house in Harold's Cross, some other family was going to be stuck in a hotel. The first crowd said, we'll stay in the hotel for a while and take our chances for our own reasons, the second family says brilliant and gets a new home.

Allowing people to make these decisions is bound to lead to better outcomes than forcing everyone into the first place that comes up, because you're going to have many instances of a place suiting family 2 on the list perfectly while it would have been a disaster for family 1.

<mod snip>

Michael D Not Higgins

I said it last time, how many of these places are repeat refusals.

40% is misleading since let's say they had 5,000 houses offered that year, we have approx 2,000 refusals (1,990 from the official figures). If for example 90% of the 1,990 refusals are represented by 100 houses, something's wrong with those houses. Removing the problem houses then shows 4,900 houses with 199 refusals (some legit, some not) and a refusal rate of 4%.

Now the above is exaggerated for effect, but it shows how the figures can be misleading. We've heard here about families with 3 kids being offered 2 bed flats, wholly inadequate and rightfully refused. So there are a number of unsuitable properties just being offered to the next on the list rather than the most suitable property.

Granted, there are spurious refusal reasons. Some of those listed in the old article include "there's too many dogs barking in the area" and "the man died and didn't have a Mass so I'd be superstitious about the house". These should be addressed but can hardly make up the majority of the refusals. The real issue is the lack of stock and being left with mostly the dregs of the social housing.

keane2097

I'm not even going to bother reading your post since I can see it pulls out a couple of words from a few fairly involved posts I made. Enjoy your cherries.

hmmm

keane2097 wrote: »

The above scenario to my mind is totally grand. Some family was going to move into the house in Harold's Cross, some other family was going to be stuck in a hotel. The first crowd said, we'll stay in the hotel for a while and take our chances for our own reasons, the second family says brilliant and gets a new home.

The problem is with your comment that "we'll stay in a hotel". Putting people up in temporary accommodation costs a fortune.

You're absolutely right that if I'm someone staying in a hotel, or getting rent allowance, I'm not going to want to leave a nice neighbourhood to move into a council house in a rougher area - but we don't have unlimited amounts of taxpayers money to support people who want to live only in the areas they feel entitled to live in.

<mod snip>

leanonme

This year i purchased a house, i could not afford one in the area my family live, instead i purchases one where I could afford one which is a 30 minute drive from them. Why didn't someone give me a house where I want to live.

Uncle Ben

leanonme wrote: »

and on top of that we also made the decision not to have children until we could afford to look after them. Seems kind of alien to some people.

I'd say there's some on here who thinks that everyone on the housing list are either unemployed, or single mothers or both. What do you think?

...And Justice

Myself and my partner applied for a council house in 2005, we got the house in 2006, because houses were so expensive at that time, even though I was working.

We took the house because we had a vision to buy our own. They put us in a shíthole , but I didn't care, for me it was a means to an end. 3 years after (2010) I. Bought a house in a "normal" area, after years of saving our asses off.

Uncle Ben

You don't have to be on sw to be on the housing lists. I think you can earn up to 38k to qualify for Dublin. Approx 34k for Galway. Some people have a jaundiced view also that everyone on the housing list is also looking for a council house. Again not necessarily so. It is however a condition of rental allowance that a person is on the housing list.

April 73

Uncle Ben wrote: »

You don't have to be on sw to be on the housing lists. I think you can earn up to 38k to qualify for Dublin. Approx 34k for Galway. Some people have a jaundiced view also that everyone on the housing list is also looking for a council house. Again not necessarily so. It is however a condition of rental allowance that a person is on the housing list.

If that's the case I wonder how many people genuinely want a council house & how many are happy to continue with rent allowance in the private sector?
I can see the attraction to staying in private rented accomodation rather than some of the potential houses/areas that might be offered as social housing.

I'm guessing that people being housed in emergency accomodation like hotels are probably less likely to refuse the offer of a house. Giving up a nice rented house in a nice area is going to result in a refusal more often than not.

quadrifoglio verde

Uncle Ben wrote: »

You don't have to be on sw to be on the housing lists. I think you can earn up to 38k to qualify for Dublin. Approx 34k for Galway. Some people have a jaundiced view also that everyone on the housing list is also looking for a council house. Again not necessarily so. It is however a condition of rental allowance that a person is on the housing list.

Sorry but if you want the tax payer to house you, you shouldn't get to chose.
Want to remain renting, you can pay for it yourself

I used to work with a man who moved from Dublin 5 to portlaoise because he could no longer afford the rent.

Their children had to move schools, away from their friends, they've a 90 minute plus commute to work each day, on a good one.

So tell me how that's fair or just while others, with their hands in the tax payers pocket scream I wanna be housed here and nowhere else.

...And Justice

For me I was renting before I got the council house. Back in 2006 rent was the same as it is now, so the backup plan was to apply for a council house to save up for a house. Nothing wrong with that, we qualified under the rules. The plan worked out for me because of the recession. I bought a house which was previously out of my reach.

What annoys me now is flippant feckers with no future planning looking for the house of their dreams from the council, believe me I have a few in-laws like that, makes me sick that I work so hard and they don't give a monkeys.

athtrasna

Thread closed temporarily to allow for clean up

athtrasna

athtrasna wrote: »

Folks can we keep discussion on the accommodation and property aspects please. The thread won't last long if it descends into social housing tenant bashing

Mod

Here it is again in case you missed it. It's not social housing list people v everyone else. A lot of posts have been deleted and the thread is being reopened in the hope that it can stay on topic. There will be no more warnings.

the_syco

borderlinemeath wrote: »

yet this article makes reference to serial offenders that turn down a number of properties.

I'm uncertain how to discuss this issue, as any criticism of the people on the social housing list and/or the serial offenders is not allowed.

Gatling

...And Justice wrote: »

Myself and my partner applied for a council house in 2005, we got the house in 2006,

Done well to get a council house with less than 12 months on the list even in 2006 the lists were bad ,
What part of the country