11 year wait for house in Dundalk
ONE person on Louth County Council’s housing list waited for 11 years in order to be allocated a home, new data from the local authority has revealed.
The allocation of tenancies for July, which is issued to councillors on a monthly basis, details the date of the allocation, the address, the type of tenure and the kind of accommodation supplied. The data also reveals how long the person was waiting on the allocation and shows that last month, most people were waiting eight years or more, with one person on the waiting list 11 years in order to secure a three-bedroom house.
One person waited nine years, while five people waited for eight years and three waited for seven.
The figures for July show that 24 houses were allocated in the Dundalk area, the vast majority two and three bed houses. The figures make for ‘grim reading’ according to Sinn Fein councillor Tomas Sharkey.
He said: ‘Louth County Council regularly update Councillors on the houses that have been allocated to families on the waiting list. The most recent report makes for grim reading. We have been informed that the families allocated homes in recent weeks have been on the waiting list for anything from 7.5 and 11 years. It is obviously a huge relief for these families that they can now settle into their homes.
‘However these figures offer no comfort for the thousands of families waiting. They too are looking at a similar long wait for a Council house. The shortage of council houses means that families are left in limbo for many years, unsure of where they will be living when children go to school or progress to second level.
‘Louth County Council owns a lot of land that was acquired for housing. It is government policy that is preventing the building of homes on these lands. With families waiting 11 years for a house in Louth we must admit that this is a crisis that impacts on ordinary families. We have had four governments since some families first applied for housing and each and every one has failed to address the housing problem’.