Hap

Blossom03 wrote: »

Hi, I am a single mother with 1 child and I am currently looking for a place to rent through Hap. I have found a place for 850 a month after being giving the limit of 900 a month from my local council. I am just wondering how much would I pay weekly? Do I have to pay for the deposit of the apartment myself or can I get some sort of help from social welfare, also how long does the whole hap process take.
Thank you

I’ve just been through this as a landlord.
They’ll expect you to pay the deposit, although my tenant was already on an old FAS rent allowance, moving to HAP, and they paid the deposit.

You’ll also have to cover the first months rent almost certainly, (it should probably be refunded in time - the council will call the LL and ask how long the rent is paid up to) as it will take 2-3 months to process the claim if it’s a busy county council area.

As for how much you pay, they will take account for your earnings, be it working hours and/or social welfare.
In my case I believe both tenants have part time weekly hours and pay 1/3 of the monthly rent.

Hope that helps

11amie11 wrote: »

Hi everyone

So I am on the social housing list which means I am entitled to HAP, as far as I know. The thing is I recently started a full time job and my takehome is roughly 450 p/w (This means I still fall under the income threshold to be on the social housing list) The thing is in my area it is quite expensive to rent and the cheapest I can see is around €1600.

The limit in my area for a single person is €600. So i am wondering if I got a place for €1600, does that mean HAP pay €600 of it for me or is that not how it works? Any help much appreciated. Thanks.

Yes, if you qualify, HAP will pay up to the monthly limit for your area; if you end up renting a place that costs more, you'll have to pay the difference directly to the landlord, so you'd have to pay €1000 per month to the landlord in that case, plus you'll pay whatever your weekly HAP contribution is to the local council. The council does have some discretion to exceed the local area's HAP limit by a small amount (up to 20%) in exceptional cases, but I'm not sure if yours would qualify.

Between your own HAP contributions (which could be a couple hundred or more at your income level) and your top-up, that would leave you spending a huge portion of your income on rent even with the HAP assistance. You may want to consider looking at cheaper places outside of your current area and dealing with the commute, or consider shared accommodation (you'll get a smaller HAP benefit, but you'd probably still end up paying a lot less out of pocket).

I believe tenant top-ups have always been allowed on HAP; it's the old Rent Supplement scheme that doesn't allow the full rent to be more than the Rent Supplement amount plus the tenant's official household contributions (though no doubt there have always been a few shady landlords extorting illegal "top-ups" from Rent Supplement tenants, I'm sure...).

http://hap.ie/tenants/payments/

Where the monthly rent agreed with your landlord exceeds the maximum rent limit payable by your local authority on your behalf, you must pay the difference directly to your landlord.

For the HAP payment itself, yes, you pay your weekly contributions to the local authority and they pay the landlord the HAP amount in arrears on the last Wednesday of the month. How you pay your own portion of the rent directly to the landlord, if the actual rent is higher than the HAP amount, is presumably arranged between you and them the same way as with any other private tenancy.