Irish Research Council funds project on the management and financing of social housing
Posted: 19 July, 2016
A Government plan to be published today will propose the building of social housing on a scale not seen in decades. Minister for Housing Simon Coveney will set out the Government’s Action Plan for Housing, its flagship policy document to tackle the housing crisis, which is expected to involve the allocation of a further €2 billion for social housing.
Providing accommodation for low income households in a way that is affordable both for the households and for the exchequer is one of the biggest challenges currently faced by policy makers in Ireland. An innovative research project, funded under the Irish Research Council’s New Foundations scheme, aims to help policy makers meet this challenge by identifying affordable mechanisms for funding increased social housing provision.
The research project is led by Dr Michelle Norris, University College Dublin, and Simon Brooke, Head of Policy at Clúid Housing Association, the biggest non-profit sector provider of social housing in Ireland.
Using a collaborative approach, the project employs research and knowledge-exchange to identify the challenges Irish housing associations currently encounter in accessing affordable finance. It also seeks solutions to these challenges by examining models that have worked in other European countries and facilitating dialogue between Irish housing associations and policy-makers and their counterparts in Denmark, Austria and England.
Click here to hear Dr Norris speaking on RTE’s Morning Ireland about how building a large number of social housing units should be critical part of the government’s new plan.
