Tag Archives: Approved Housing Bodies

A HOMELESS mother-of-two says she is at breaking point over the stress of having to move from hotels to bed and breakfast accommodation in recent weeks. Last July, the woman, who has an 18-month-old son and a 16-year-old daughter, who is in the care of a relative until she gets a house, got an initial four-week termination notice from a house in South-East Clare. Following another two-week notice to quit the property, which involved receiving a Housing Assistance Payment (HAP) from the council, she was officially declared homeless on August 31. The woman, who does not wish to be named, has asked the council to allocate a house for her and her son as quickly as possible on humanitarian grounds. Since the receipt of the notice, she told The Clare Champion she has been forced to move with her baby son between the Auburn Lodge Hotel, Treacy’s West County and various bed and breakfasts. Having spent the last three weeks …

Minister for Housing and Planning, Jan O’Sullivan has dismissed as “misleading and grossly inaccurate” Opposition claims that recipients of the new Housing Assistance Payment (HAP) will not have a route to other forms of social housing. “The new Housing Assistance Payment is the most radical reform of social housing support in decades. It transforms the system of rent supplement which is widely recognised as not being fit for purpose.The new Housing Assistance Payment will benefit those households who require assistance with their housing needs,” she asserted on this Tuesday. The minister said:  It will ensure that all long-term housing support is accessed through each local authority, rather than the current fractured system that involves the Department of Social Protection making payments, with people joining waiting lists to access the local authority system; It will ensure that people can take up employment and still retain housing support; It will improve standards of accommodation for tenants, with a more coherent system of inspection under the …