Clare County Council has been approved €659,554 to bring local authority houses back into use throughout the county. The money will be used to renovate 30 houses for re-letting.
The council applied for funding to renovate 87 derelict houses.However, three applications were rejected and a further 56 are in the process of being assessed.
Clare Deputy Joe Carey said, “There are two programmes that enable local authorities to refurbish vacant social housing requiring more significant works than the normal level of pre-letting repairs. The Voids programme provides funding of up to €30,000 per unit while the Derelicts programme is aimed at more seriously derelict social houses,” Deputy Carey explained.
“The Housing Agency is being provided with €70 million to engage with lending institutions to acquire properties for social housing and this is expected to deliver 1,600 units over the period to 2020. Other measures include a ‘Repair and Leasing’ initiative to allow property owners bring vacant properties up to standard for leasing for social housing. Capital provision of €6 million will deliver 150 units under this new initiative.
“A ‘Buy and Renew’ initiative will also support local authorities and approved housing bodies to purchase private housing units in need of repair, renew them and make them available for social housing use. An initial capital provision of €25 million will be available for this initiative.”
A native of Ennis, Colin McGann has been editor of The Clare Champion since August 2020. Former editor of The Clare People, he is a journalism and communications graduate of Dublin Institute of Technology.