75 houses empty – as 3,400 Galway households wait for a home

A total of 75 local authority homes in Galway City are lying vacant and derelict, some for up to seven years, while over 3,400 households are stuck on a housing waiting list, for as long as 11 years.

 The irony of the city’s housing situation was highlighted at last night’s City Council meeting where fears were also expressed that ‘queue jumping’ up the social housing waiting list was fuelling racism.

Galway City Council’s latest housing report showed there were a total of 3,434 households on the local authority housing waiting list.

More than 200 of those need a home because they either have a disability (physical, mental, intellectual or sensory) or for medical or compassionate reasons.

Despite the large numbers waiting to be housed, the report noted that some 75 Council owned properties were vacant, and the meeting heard that in some cases they were derelict for over seven years.

City Councillor Catherine Connolly (Independent) said the city’s housing crisis has worsened since 1999, and it would deteriorate further because Government policy is to no longer build social housing.

She said there were people on the city’s waiting list for eleven years, yet there were empty houses all over the city that have been left derelict since 2006 and 2007 in some cases.

Director of Services for Housing, Joe O’Neill agreed that the Council’s resources should be put into ‘turning around’ vacant houses but he pointed out that the 75 vacant properties represented less than 3% of its total housing stock.

Mr O’Neill said the Council was looking at ways to “speed up the process” of reallocating the vacant properties and that it was the Council’s intention to reduce the amount of vacant premises.

City Councillor Nuala Nolan (Labour) raised the spectre of “queue hopping” of householders on the waiting list, which, she said, was fuelling racism. She said in some cases, people are on a waiting list and they see other people on a waiting list for a lesser period of time get housed before them.

Read more in today’s Connacht Sentinel