Over 4k empty homes in Sligo

INDEPENDENT Councillor Declan Bree has revealed that there are currently 4,727 vacant houses in the county, excluding holiday homes, at a time when “we have a housing crisis.”

Councillor Bree said it was “immoral and unjust to have dwelling houses lying vacant in Sligo while families on the housing list are living in overcrowded and unfit conditions.”

The November Council meeting was told that there currently 1,100 families on the waiting list for houses in the county.

Urging the council to make use of Compulsory Purchase Orders, Cllr Bree said he believed “action must be taken in regard to the large number of dwellings which are lying vacant in the midst of the housing crisis.

“I raised this at a council meeting a year ago and unfortunately to date, no action has been taken by this council to use compulsory purchase powers to acquire long term vacant dwellings in Sligo.

“The market value has to be paid to the owners of property being bought by way of CPO so we are not talking about seizing the dwellings.”

Cllr Bree said he accepted that not “all of these dwellings may be suitable for social housing or may not be located in areas where there is a high demand.

“However, I believe that many of them would be suitable for social housing and I feel the council should be using its compulsory powers to acquire them.

“Louth County Council has led the way in its use of CPO’s to acquire vacant housing and in the last two years has acquired about 60,” he said.

Housing Officer Joe Murphy said the council was keen to get CPO’s where agreement could be reached.

Director of Services Bartley Gavin told the meeting that CPOS are very time consuming in terms of resources.

Louth had got a good amount of CPO’s but there was a “dedicated team working on that’.

“We must use whatever resources we can, but we must concentrate our resources that deliver for us”.

He added that CPO’s can be expensive and the council had to come in under certain figures:“We could start a process and find that we are over the cost limit”.

Councillor Bree’s motion that in areas of high demand the council will use CPO’s to buy vacant houses and make them available for people on the housing list was adopted unanimously.