State to Create 45,000 Social Homes
The Government’s much anticipated plan to tackle the housing crisis is set into motion as a State fund will purchase distressed properties from banks and a pledge to build 45,000 new social houses at least by 2021.
Minister for Housing and Planning, Simon Coveney, is due to publish his Housing Action Plan on Tuesday, subject to Cabinet approval.
The 52-page document, dated the end of last month, sets out plans to deliver “mixed tenure” housing, on public land, to speed up the planning process for social housing and to establish a “procurement centre of excellence” in the Housing Agency.
Built around seven “pillars”, the plan says the State must intervene in the housing crisis to “reduce the scope for the housing sector to be the source of damaging behaviour and dynamics which could threaten our future prosperity”.
It says: “The State must ensure that its actions support the renewal of the [construction and development] industries, especially in terms of their capacity to undertake volume building in areas of most pressing need.”
