Over 220 people have presented themselves as homeless to Mayo County Council already this year.
At the quarterly meeting of the Housing Strategic Policy Committee of the local authority which took place this week, the members of the committee were given a break down of the figures of the homeless presentations to the local authority so far this year by Oliva Gallagher, acting Head of Housing for Mayo County Council.
In the month of October along the council had 20 homeless presentations, made up of 23 adults and six children. In the year to date the council has had 139 presentations which comprised of 173 adults and 51 children. The council also have four families in long term emergency accommodation at present the committee was also told.
In 2017 the council had a total of 195 presentations for the whole year, which was made up up of 157 adults and 38 children. The chairperson of the committee Cllr Gerry Ginty told the meeting that "this is a serious problem, that I saw coming and would have had people laughed at me a number of years ago and we
240 units delivered under capital programme to date
Under the housing captial programme the coucil have a target of 708 units to be delivered between 2016 and 2021. So far the council have delivered 240 units, with two under the buy and renew scheme, 38 through construction, 58 through acquisition, 52 through leasing, 68 from voids and 22 more provided by the voluntary sector.
The council is also supporting 1,819 households in the private rented sector, with 1,044 of them supported through the Housing Assistance Payment scheme, 627 under the Rental Accommodation Scheme and 148 through social leasing schemes.
When it comes to refugee resettlement 136 people have been accommodated in the county, 120 of them by Mayo County Council and 16 by the Red Cross. The target figure for the county is 190 refugee's resettled - which was initially hoped to be achieved by the end of this year, but the date has been pushed out to March 2019.
