Tipperary housing crisis intensifies as working families face eviction and no hope of emergency accommodation
Eight in 10 families facing homelessness in Tipperary are working families, according to a councillor who is supporting them.
Independent councillor Seamie Morris said that getting emergency accommodation is now so rare for families like the ones he is helping that it is like “winning the lotto”.
The claims came at the September meeting of Tipperary County Council during a discussion about housing.
Cllr Morris added that it was a frightening statistic that 80pc of families he is supporting as they face homelessness are working.
“The last four or five weeks have probably been the worst I have ever put down as a councillor,” he said. “The housing crisis has maxed out so much that people who get emergency accommodation, it’s like winning the lotto.
“We can’t even find emergency accommodation for people who are losing their houses through notices to quit, through no fault of their own.
“80pc of the people I’m dealing with at the moment are working families that are becoming homeless, and we can’t provide a home for them in Nenagh,” Cllr Morris added.
The independent councillor pointed to the lack of capacity in Nenagh’s Waste Water Treatment Plant (WWTP), saying that this was severely impacting on the ability to deliver homes in the north Tipperary town.
Cllr Morris said several housing projects had been “going around in circles” for years, despite the council having acquired sites for development.
He pointed to developments at William Street, Gortlandroe, and Millersbrook as examples.
“The council would have put a costing on [those projects] when they bought the sites, but now, three and four years later, we’re still not finishing those projects, nor have we put a spade in the ground,” Cllr Morris explained.
The long-awaited upgrade of the town’s WWTP was meant to be completed in 2024, he added, but this has now been pushed out to 2029.
“We have people living in tents, we’ve people living in cars, there’s people living on people’s couches, there’s families broken up, people with autistic children having to go into emergency accommodation, all because of the lack of houses,” he said.
Cllr Morris asked the council executive if the local authority had received connection agreements with Uisce Éireann for all the sites he mentioned so that work can begin on delivering the much-needed housing.
In response, the council’s director of services for housing Jonathan Cooney said that that council has over 1,000 more houses now than they did six years ago.
He also said that there was light at the end of the tunnel and hoped more houses would be delivered soon.
“The lack of waste water treatment facilities in Nenagh has held up progression on social land and private housing, we have bought the land, we have schemes in the early stages ready to go, we have pre-connection approvals ready to go.
“I’ve spoken to Uisce Éireann and I got the sense that they’re now satisfied and have agreed to commence construction in the coming months so that by the time those dwellings are completed, they will be ready to connect,” Mr Cooney added.