A new system of "incremental" home ownership for people on low incomes and new regulations requiring landlords to maintain the outside of their properties to an acceptable standard are planned for next year. John Downesreports.
Outlining details of the Budget allocation to his department, Batt O'Keeffe, Minister of State with responsibility for housing, urban renewal and developing areas, also expressed confidence that the Government would meet its targets of 9,000 social housing homes for this year, and 9,000 for next year.
He said there had been a dramatic improvement in the number of social housing units provided in the third quarter of this year, to 1,766, with the aim being to provide 6,500 of these this year.
A further 2,500 units would be provided within the rental accommodation and voluntary and cooperative housing sector, he added.
A type of "performance-based" system introduced for local authorities to encourage them to meet set targets for the numbers of properties registered with the Private Residential Tenancies Board - and achieving inspection targets - is linked to €7 million in funding over three years, he added.
"We will obviously be expecting them to live up to these targets," he said. "We weren't happy with the level of inspections by local authorities, but it has improved."
According to Mr O'Keeffe, the new system of "incremental" home ownership for individuals on low incomes could see a tenant owning about 30 per cent of their home, with measures also introduced to ensure their monthly repayments were at an affordable level.
Just over 100 applications for the current shared ownership scheme, which requires a minimum of 40 per cent of the house to be owned by the purchaser, have been received this year, compared to more than 1,000 in previous years.
This indicated the need for a new scheme, which might be linked to a Government funded rather a private loan, to be introduced which was more relevant to today's climate, he said.
Mr O'Keeffe revealed that he planned to introduce regulations requiring landlords to maintain the outside of their properties to an acceptable standard, in keeping with the "general tenor" of the road, as well as other measures to ensure they addressed the issue of heating in their properties.
It is expected that typical issues which landlords would have to address might include ensuring any grass is cut, fences are painted, and windows varnished.
It remained unclear how such a system would be enforced, although Mr O'Keeffe pointed to the fact that landlords were already required to meet a range of standards under existing regulations.
"I would hope to bring forward legislation to make it incumbent upon private landlords to actively maintain the outside of a property," he said.