Services » Housing & Community

The Role of Housing & Community Services

Aim:

That every household has a dwelling suitable to its needs, located in an acceptable environment and at a price or rent it can afford.

Role of Section:

To achieve the above aim, Cork City Council’s housing section provides the following range of housing services:

• Provision, management, maintenance and improvement of Local Authority housing including halting sites for travellers.
• Assistance by way of grants, loans, subsidies and provision of private sites to persons housing themselves or improving their houses.
• Securing accommodation for homeless persons.
• Promoting and assisting the provision of housing by voluntary housing associations.
• Improvement to private houses as an alternative to rehousing by the Local Authority.
• Operation of shared ownership scheme and administration of mortgage allowance scheme for tenants and tenant purchasers.
• Enforcement of certain housing standards and control.
• Assessment of housing need.
• Grants for the provision or alteration of accommodation to satisfy the needs of disabled persons.
• Extensions, alterations to local authority houses for needs of disabled persons.
• Extensions, alterations to local authority houses to relieve overcrowding.
• Encouraging home-ownership by the operation of the Tenant Purchase Scheme, 1995.

Cork City Council has approximately 8,092 rented properties in its ownership. Every year, a number of new houses are built and a number of houses are also sold to existing tenants under the Tenant Purchase Scheme. An Assessment of housing needs is carried out by the Local Authority every three years to establish housing requirement in the area. The assessment was last carried out in 2005 and forms the basis for allocation of housing starts by the Department of The Environment and Local Government.

The actual number of houses built and acquired depends on the Department of the Environment and Local Government's Annual Housing New Start Allocation. At the end of 2005, 254 units were completed or were nearing completion and the purchase terms for 100 houses were agreed in the administrative area of Cork County Borough Council. These houses along with casual vacancies, which arise, are then available for letting.

At the end of 2005, the number of applicants for this accommodation on Cork City Council's housing list at any one time averaged approximately 4,601 with a further 514 applicants awaiting assessment of their application.