Affordable housing strategy failing - official

The affordable housing strategy is failing to attract families and "key workers" and demand for social housing in Dublin is likely to be 50 per cent lower than official figures indicate, assistant city manager Brendan Kenny has said.

Affordable housing was developed by the Government to allow families and workers such as teachers, gardaí and nurses who had been priced out of the housing market to buy their own homes at a reduced price with the assistance of local authorities.

However Mr Kenny, the council manager with responsibility for housing, said that these "key workers" are not applying for affordable housing and up to 85 per cent of people on the waiting list were single.

In addition, while there were 7,000 people on the waiting list, about half of these would back out of buying the house before the end of the process.

Mr Kenny's department is conducting an analysis of the city's affordable housing system which he intends to bring before councillors next month. While the analysis is not yet complete, a number of factors contributing to the low uptake of affordable housing had come to light.

Applicants were frequently "too fussy" about the locations of the housing schemes. The homes on offer were also generally apartments and "key workers tend to want to live in houses", Mr Kenny said.

People were backing out when they realised that there was a "claw-back" in place to allow the council to recover money if the house was sold within a 20-year period, he said.

"This raises the question of why some people are getting into this: is it because they need a home or they want to get into the business of property development?"

The large number of single people on the waiting list raised questions as to "how real" the 7,000 figure was, he said.

"They apply for the affordable housing, then they don't have the money for the mortgage, a lot of them might be better fared concentrating on the private rental sector."

The council previously had a weighted system that allocated a priority to people according to their circumstances.

For example, those with children were placed high on the waiting list. However, this was discontinued last year in favour of a lottery system. Mr Kenny said it may be time to reintroduce a system that would give greater priority to couples, households or older applicants.