In January 2023, Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien said he’d look at bringing co-living under rent-pressure-zone rules.
“A planning enforcement file will be opened and investigations will be carried out,” a council spokesperson says.
It suggested that a major chunk of unregistered tenancies are possibly ”informal” and don’t have to be registered. Does that bear out?
Owned, via a company, by Teeling Whiskey Company founder Jack Teeling, it’s been sitting empty for years. “It’s an awful waste,” says a local councillor.
Responsibility for approving funding should be shifted from the Department of Housing to the Housing Agency and streamlined, the commission’s report says.
The number of investigations isn’t in itself a measure of its success as a regulator, said its deputy director earlier this month.
But it is still early days.
Homeless since 2021, Michael Conway was granted medical priority last September and shot up the list. But nine months later he still hasn’t reached the top.
Rather than spending loads of money on that idea, the government should give it to councils to fix up their housing, says housing activist Rita Fagan.
“Is it going to put the cost rental scheme in jeopardy?” asks independent Councillor John Lyons, after price hikes.
There should be a special funding stream for housing charities retrofitting older homes, said a spokesperson for the sector.
What’s the government doing to stop landlords from using extra charges to circumvent rent-pressure zone laws? Social Democrats TD Cian O’Callaghan has asked.
