Dispute resolved over ‘excessive rents’ for Fr Scully House

A five-month dispute over the rents sought by the Catholic Housing Aid Society for a new €17-million State-funded senior citizens' housing complex in Dublin's inner city has been resolved.

Following a meeting with Minister for the Environment Alan Kelly, Dublin City Council and the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin, the society has agreed to charge standard social housing rents to tenants of Fr Scully House, a senior citizens' complex of 99 apartments near Mountjoy Square.

The decision will allow elderly tenants, who had lived in the old Fr Scully complex before its demolition eight years ago, to move into their new homes by Christmas. The former tenants, most of whom are in their 70s and 80s, said they had been “treated deplorably” by the society.

The original Fr Scully House, a complex of 45 senior citizens’ bedsits, was built in the late 1960s on land granted to the society by the then Dublin Corporation. The complex was vacated in 2006 and subsequently demolished. Construction of the new complex of 90 one-bed apartments and nine two-beds has recently been completed.

Earmarked

Three quarters of the units were to be allocated to older people on the city council’s housing waiting list, but 25 apartments were earmarked for the society’s tenants, most of whom are former residents of the old Fr Scully House flats and are living temporarily in private rental accommodation until the completion of the complex.

The council last month said it had been in negotiations with the society since last July but had been unable to allocate tenants to the complex because of the excessively high social housing rents sought by the society. The society has set rents of €600 a month for the majority of units. The social housing rent allowance for a single person is €520.

Last Friday, in response to the death of homeless man Jonathan Corrie, the society offered to hand over the building to the council "for use as they see fit, as a temporary emergency measure to alleviate the current crisis".

However, it did not tell the former residents, a number of whom spoke to The Irish Times yesterday.

Treated like imbeciles

“We are their tenants and they tell us nothing. We have absolutely no communication from them, anything we know we read in the paper. They treat us like imbeciles or like children,” one tenant in his 70s said.

The tenants said they were shown around the apartments around two months ago but have had no contact with the society since.

“We have been out of our homes for eight years, living in what was to be temporary accommodation for three years, and at the last minute we’re told there’s an issue with the rents. This should have been resolved at a much earlier stage.”

A spokesman for the society last night said the 25 tenants could move into their new homes before Christmas, they would not have to pay deposits and their rent would not be increased. The society would now also be accepting nominations from the council in relation to allocating the remaining 74 units.