Social Housing - Irish style

Muahahaha wrote: »

While I'm not against social housing it always makes me feel really annoyed to hear stories like this where people seem to get away with working the system and no council officials ever call them out on it.

The background to this is a social housing block of 54 flats in Temple Bar, it's called Crampton Court. It's down an alleyway near the river in Temple Bar and the council has wanted to redevelop it in modern 2 bed apartments which would then be offered to those tenants who wanted to return after the renovation. Others would be housed elsewhere in the city. The council got agreement with all the tenants bar one who has now held up the scheme for almost a year with his legal challenges.

This lad, according to the Indo, is a well known awarding winning chef. Doesn't exactly sound to me like the type of guy who is in need of social housing. And then you learn that he owns a 2 bed apartment in Wexford and he also owns Papa Rhodes restaurant in Wexford as well as having another restaurant based in the US.

It gets worse. In legal argument in court the chef demanded that the council pay him €575,000 so he could buy a 2 bed city centre apartment "preferably near a Luas stop" in order to compensate him for making him 'homeless'. In the end the judge ruled that the council should pay him €35,000 compensation to move out of this public housing and that the council should pay their own legal costs, which probably mount to way over €35,000 at this stage. I'm stunned that the judge is even giving this guy compensation for losing his social housing when clearly he has far greater financial means at his disposal compared to people who are genuinely homeless. No wonder we have an homeless epidemic when this carry on is happening.

http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/news/chef-roddy-hickson-to-be-given-35k-compensation-by-dublin-city-council-to-quit-temple-bar-flat-30468089.html

What annoys me about this is the way the council operate the social housing system. Once you have a council house or flat you have it for life and then your kids can have it. Social housing then becomes inter-generational. At no stage will the council every come along and say, hey you guys are earning €75k a year into your household and we've got these homeless and broke people here who are in more need, so hey, perhaps time to find yourself a private rental like everyone else instead of having the council subsidize your clearly comfortable lifestyle ?'

Why are we paying taxes into a system that rewards people who aren't even in need of social housing? And why do our councils even let it happen? Is it a fear of media coverage of them having to evict the odd family who don't want to step off the gravy train? IMO social housing should be always seen as a temporary 1-3 year solution where families are given enough time to get back on their feet before they're expected to vacate the house for someone in more need of them. The current system is very very broken and regular hard working people paying for this carry on through their taxes yet will likely never see the benefits of it.

Joeytheparrot wrote: »

:rolleyes: read the bloody article ffs