Thomas Pringle TD has reacted to today’s Social Housing Strategy describing the timescale as ‘unrealistic’ leaving its implementation being left open to be extended.
“While I welcome the prospect of 35,000 new social housing units being created over the next 6 years, I believe that certain goals the government has set for itself are unachievable to reach by 2020 which will ultimately lead to the failure of this strategy,” said the Donegal TD.
“The formation of large-scale Approved Housing Bodies (AHBs) and dealing with the transition of repossessed Buy-To-Let properties for example in itself would take a considerable time to achieve and I question the timescale set-out in this regard in particular.
“With regards to Donegal, I believe the council should pursue the establishment of a housing association for the entire county whereby this would allow the council to access borrowing that would be off balance sheet and where they already have the staff and resources to scale-up on delivering a housing programme – and I’ve been in contact with the County Manager in relation to this proposal.
“Investing Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) and the government’s continued over-reliance on various rent assistance schemes to paper over the cracks of the housing crisis are very costly measures when the capital invested in these schemes could simply be used to build more social housing,” stated Pringle.
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