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Landlords fail to sign up for new scheme

Thursday, 06 March 2008

A scheme aimed at tightening up regulations governing accommodation for people on social welfare who receive rent support has failed to secure support from Dublin landlords, new figures from the Department of the Environment reveal.
The Rental Accommodation Scheme (RAS) was implemented by Dublin City Council in July 2005 with the intention of providing those receiving rent supplement with improved and good quality housing stock effectively controlled by the local authority.
Under the scheme local authorities enter into contractual arrangements whereby they assume responsibility for making full monthly payments to landlords for the duration of the contract.
The landlord does not have to collect rent or fill vacancies and the council pays full rent even if the property is vacant.
However, despite heavy promotion of the scheme, the Department of the Environment revealed last week that only 330 private landlords had signed up to the scheme in the city council area.
This is despite the fact that, according to the Department of Social and Family Affairs, there were some 20,498 people in receipt of the rent supplement allowance in the city council area last year alone.
The number of rent supplement recipients in Dublin City who are over 18 months or more on rent supplement and thereby eligible to apply for the RAS scheme, is approximately 6,700 households.
The aim of RAS is to put the onus on local authorities to take responsibility for people who are in receipt of rent supplement and are deemed to have a long term housing need.
The rent supplement scheme as it exists at the moment will continue for those people who have short term housing needs.
A spokesman for the city council said that approximately 1,000 households had been accommodated through the scheme to date.
“With regard to progress on the scheme [RAS] within the Dublin City Council area, progress was slower than expected during the initial roll out,” he said. “However, landlords are now more aware of the scheme and its benefits in terms of guaranteed rents.
“Since 2007, Dublin City Council has taken in a significant amount of high quality properties, which has resulted in much improved standard/living conditions for many rent supplement recipients.
“The Dublin City Council RAS Unit expects to see continued growth of the scheme in 2008.”
The spokesman added that the city council was also involved in a procurement project with the Affordable Homes Partnership, the aim of which is to attract more developers and professional landlords to the scheme.
A recent report, prepared by the State-funded Centre for Housing Research, showed that sub-standard housing was much more common among rent-supplement properties compared to the rest of the private rented market.
This found exceptionally high rates of non-compliance with legal minimum standards in areas run by Dublin City Council as high as 78 per cent. The average failure rate for the eight local authorities included in the report was 49 per cent.
The report noted that rent-supplement tenants, who represent the lower end of the market, are less likely to push for higher standards and that much of this accommodation was less likely to improve due to the high level of short-term lettings
The study found that accommodation standard failure rates were even higher when properties were measured against new standards used under the RAS scheme.
Some 96 per cent of properties in Dublin failed to meet these standards, while the failure rate of properties in all eight local authority areas was 55 per cent.

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