Byrne says council encouraging private rentals over houses
SINN Féin Councillor Joanna Byrne has slammed Louth County Council for ‘actively encouraging families to surrender their homes and move into private rented accommodation’.
At Monday’s meeting, she said the issue arose when she broached the subject of the council not being able to fulfil transfer requests, an issue she foresees as becoming more prevalent.
“Louth County Council has only managed to facilitate seven housing transfers to date in 2020, whilst I am aware of the financial complexities in transfers and the local authority not having the funds to fulfil these I do not think this issue is going away and is in fact only going to increase,” she said.
“Considering the current climate of an escalation in drugs, crime and gangland feud in this county, a lot of these transfer requests are from people living in fear and it has become apparent to me in dealing with some of these cases that the local authority is operating off an unwritten policy of encouraging tenants to surrender the keys to their properties, move into private rented accommodation and start back from scratch at the bottom of the housing list.
She also called on the council to start thinking of the ‘new norm’ in dealing with homelessness throughout the County post Covid-19.
She stated their “quick thinking in opening up voids (vacant properties) to facilitate social distancing in hostels and hubs probably saved a lot of illnesses and potentially, lives.”