‘Councils can use purchase law to curb housing crisis’

Owners could be forced to sell or rent properties vacant for year

‘We have thousands of empty homes’

THE Attorney General has reportedly advised the Government that Compulsory Purchase Orders can be used to help alleviate the housing crisis.

The Government had asked Séamus Woulfe to investigate if CPOs, in their current form, could be used by local authorities to force property owners to rent or sell houses that have been vacant for more than 12 months.

CPOs are generally used for acquiring land to build public infrastructure such as the Luas and motorway projects.

Figures show 7,941 people were homeless at the end of June, despite Central Statistics Office data revealing an estimated 183,000 homes in Ireland are currently sitting vacant.

The new plan could see legislation generally used to build roads and public transport systems used to force property owners back into the housing market if they are vacant for more than 12 months.

According to a Sunday newspaper, Mr Wolfe said he sees ‘no impediment’ to using existing laws to allow local authorities to move on owners of vacant properties as part of a new strategy to resolve the housing crisis.

‘He has indicated there shouldn’t be any obstacle to increasing the use of CPOs (compulsory purchase orders),’ a source said.

It is understood an incentive scheme will be introduced, alongside guidance on using CPOs in the Vacancy Strategy, which is expected to be announced within the coming weeks. It is believed officials hope CPOs will not have to be enforced, instead an agreement can be reached with the property owner to get the home back into the housing supply.

A number of local authorities have already used CPO to encourage property owners to put their houses into supply.

If a compulsory order is made against a property, the owner is entitled to be paid the market value of the house or apartment and the proprietors should not lose out financially from the sale.

Last Friday, Housing Minister Eoghan Murphy announced a raft of measures on the Government’s housing strategy, which will see the State move from buying homes to building houses to alleviate the homelessness crisis.

In relation to the compulsory purchase order, a spokesman for Housing Minister Eoghan Murphy said last night: ‘Nothing has been decided on the vacancy strategy.

‘The Minister has previously mentioned the possibility of some form of incentive scheme to being vacant property back into use.’

In a statement to RTÉ News, Pat Doyle, CEO of Peter McVerry Trust, said: ‘We have tens of thousands of empty homes across our cities and towns and we need to get them back into use quickly. We have logged and reviewed over 600 empty properties since late June in Dublin, Kildare and Limerick but of that only 36 units are in our pipeline for re-use.

‘In the vast majority of cases, when an owner replies to our correspondence they reject the financial packages available to them. In the middle of a housing and homeless crisis this is incredibly frustrating,’ said Mr Doyle.

It had been reported yesterday that over 1,800 houses and apartments, repossessed by banks and other financial institutions, have been offered to local authorities for use as social housing. Councils have only accepted 241 of these, according to reports.

However, yesterday, a spokesman for the Department of Housing clarified these figures, saying: ‘The Housing Agency has been tasked with acquiring 1,600 homes by 2020 under Rebuilding Ireland and to date they have acquired or are in the process of acquiring 500 homes, the majority of these have been accepted by [local authorities].’