MORE than 200 new households in Donegal accessed the government’s housing assistance payment (HAP) in order to pay their rent last year, a new report from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) has revealed.
Those applying for the means-tested payment are facing lengthy waiting lists due to the lack of rental properties nationwide and in Donegal the average wait to access the scheme is 237 days.
The longest waits by far were recorded in the Dublin local authorities which each averaged roughly three years.
The report shows that 6.3 per cent of new HAP households in Donegal in 2022 were referred from homeless services in Donegal County Council.
Almost fifty per cent of people accessing the support payment in the county were in employment and the average earned by those households was €12,070, the lowest in the state.
Across the country the average gross income of households accessing the payment earned just under €20,000.
The CSO said 2022 was, however, the first year that saw more households exit the scheme than enter it since it was launched in 2014.
In total there were just under 2,000 households accessing HAP in Donegal last year and 48 per cent were in employment.
Households in the county face an average wait of five years from when they enter the HAP scheme until they exit the scheme having secured social housing from the local authority.
Meanwhile, landlords with 50 or more HAP properties owned nearly 20 per cent of all HAP properties in 2022.
Commenting on the release, Justin Anderson, Statistician in the Statistical System Co-ordination Unit, said: “This publication examines households before, during and after participation in the Housing Assistance Payment Scheme (HAP). It utilises data from a variety of administrative data sources to provide information on income, employment, and household circumstances, as well as on HAP properties and landlords. The local authority with the highest number of households in HAP in 2022 was Dublin City at 9,650. Dublin City also had the most new households enter the scheme in 2022 (950) and exit (1,070). Outside the highest number of households in HAP in 2022 (and entrants and exits) was in Cork County.”
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