Homes are hard to come by these day and local authorities are under pressure to keep people off the streets. However, a small minority fail to appreciate the accommodation that has been provided — usually at a fraction of the normal going rates — Pat Duggan, housing manager with Cork City Council, tells Catherine Shanahan

Amid the rubbish and filth and army of rancid milk cartons, a little bunch of fake flowers stands out. In a house reminiscent of a warzone, it’s the only nod to civilised living.

The stench is grotesque: Worse than the most disastrously managed chicken coop, enough to make the enemy drop weapons and run if it was in fact a battle zone.

The walls are smeared with a substance that looks suspiciously like human excrement and the floors are covered in what looks like congealed bird droppings. This grime is embedded in the wooden staircase which leads to a bedroom so foul you can never, ever imagine anyone bedding down.

In fact, you can never imagine anyone living in this house on Cork City’s northside. But, until relatively recently, someone did.

In another house, reasonably close by, it is easy to imagine that a family once lived there, because they left enough clues behind.

They left children’s clothes, shoes, and toys. They left toothbrushes, shampoos, lotions, and potions in the bathroom. They left a sofa and beds. They left Valentine’s Day and birthday cards. They left cutlery, saucepans, hot chocolate, ketchup. They left so much in their wake that you’d have to think the decision to leave was made in an instant, possibly mid-breakfast, judging by the disarray in the kitchen.

Pat Duggan, the council’s North Area housing manager says: “The woman of the house literally walked out the door with her plasma TV and left everything else behind — left the front door open, and was gone.”

I view these houses at the council’s invitation. It wants me to see it’s not all plain sailing when it comes to fulfilling its general responsibility under the Housing Act 1988 for the provision of housing for adults who cannot afford to provide it for themselves.

It wants me to see that some people — the minority — take the council’s largesse for granted, showing little respect for the homes that so many find hard to come by at a time when the number of homeless is heading towards 9,000.

Cork City Council’s Pat Duggan and John Kelly, from the housing section, outside a boarded-up property. Picture: Larry Cummins

Easy come, easy go

There were three abandonments in the North Area in 2017 — including the woman and her plasma TV — where tenants simply upped sticks and left. Pat and his fellow housing officers usually hear this news second hand. The woman with the plasma TV, he believes, headed up north, but they haven’t been able to find her to ask why.

The house turned into a squat and neighbours alerted the council. Now it’s heavily shuttered and work needs to be done to make it habitable again. It will take more than a lick of paint. There is physical damage to the stairs — staircase support walls on the landing are crumbling.

Neighbours have written to the council asking that a particular tenant be allowed move in, someone they believe would be an addition to the area.

They have taken the trouble to write because they would like their terrace to be “a good one for our children and we want people who we know don’t engage in anti-social behaviour”.

A second abandonment saw a person let their house become a squat and moved out and presented at the homeless services in town. This person told Cork Simon Community they were homeless. Simon contacted the council’s housing section to confirm this was the case. “It turned out there was a tenancy agreement in their name,” says Pat.

Sheriff in town

Some people are forced to leave their council homes through eviction, mainly due to non-payment of rent. There were seven evictions in the North Area last year, which takes in all of the northside, except for Mayfield, Lotamore, and Silversprings.

Some of these evictions were reported in the media — the council painted as the villain of the piece. In all seven cases, the tenant had failed to pay rent. In fact the rent the council seeks doesn’t seem too punitive — it’s 15%, max, of the tenant’s income, whether that be wages or social welfare.

Basically, anyone over 18 who has income pays. If you consider that Daft.ie puts the average monthly rent in Cork City at €1,144, (€286 a week) then handing over less than €30 a week based on an income of, say, €193 if you’re on jobseeker’s allowance, seems reasonable.

In any event, evictions do not happen overnight. Pat says, in general, if matters do end up in court, it’s after prolonged engagement with the tenant.

“The fact is when it comes to social housing, you can’t just throw someone out. We engage as much as we can. We give people a chance to sort themselves out. If we go to court to get an eviction order, we’ve exhausted every avenue to get them to pay or to stop causing problems.”

Prior to going to court, tenants will have received a number of verbal warnings, followed by a written legal warning. Pat says most people will surrender the tenancy rather than be evicted, because there’s no coming back from an eviction.

“If you are evicted, you can’t go back on a housing list,” he says.

He says the only time evictions happen quickly is when the council is made aware of serious drug dealing — then it’s straight to court to get the house back, he says.

One of the houses in the Cork City Council North Area that our reporter Catherine Shanahan visited. Picture: Larry Cummins

Clean rap sheet

If you’re looking for a council house, there are a few hoops to jump through, including keeping your rap sheet clean. Anyone with a criminal record in the five years prior to applying won’t qualify.

Not that there are huge numbers with criminal records, says Pat, but there are a few, mainly for drug dealing and theft, and the two tend to go hand-in-hand.

The only offences that won’t disqualify you are traffic offences. But if you’ve been engaging in antisocial behaviour or convicted of disorderly conduct in a public place, or of violent disorder, or assault, or been the subject of various excluding orders, you can forget council housing for now.

The council works closely with other community-based workers who also have a finger on the pulse, such as gardaí, social workers, and public health nurses. The gardaí oblige by checking for criminal records on behalf of the council. This process started about seven-and-a-half years ago, when Pat arrived to head up housing in the North Area.

“Everyone, no matter who they are, is checked. If a tenant is bringing another person into the house, say a family member, they are checked too,” he says.

Overall, council tenants are a well-behaved bunch, said Pat.

“I would say 90% of our tenants are fine, we never see them. 5% are a bit iffy. 5% are hardcore trouble — they don’t want to pay anything. At the end of the day, 10% take up 90% of our time.”

Pat says if you are evicted and you move to another local authority area and seek housing there, your past will follow you.

“You’ll be blacklisted,” he says. Local authorities can check back with the area the tenant came from to see what their history was. If you didn’t pay rent in one area, the chances of getting a house in another area reduces.

If you try to return to where you came from, the arrears will not have gone away. They will be added to the rent of a new property, should you be lucky enough to get a second chance.

“Some people do come back,” says Pat.

“One woman said she was afraid to live in the city.

“She was gone for 10 years, then came back looking for a house. But she has to pay us what she owes us.”

One of the houses in the Cork City Council North Area that our reporter Catherine Shanahan visited. Picture: Larry Cummins

Null and void

The abandoned shuttered house that I viewed, with a TV stand but no TV, is known as a “void”. Void repairs over the past four years have cost the city council €25m — that’s to make just 1,000 returned properties habitable. Pat says a number of voids have been severely damaged by vandals. One cost almost €100,000 to repair after being burned twice by vandals. Another house was completely destroyed by a vigilante group targeting drug dealers.

Some of the returned properties are in such atrocious condition that they have to be fumigated. It’s the kind of dirt that gets into the fabric of the walls. This includes the house I viewed that was, in fact, covered in dried-in human faeces. The tenant in this case suffered from poor mental health. The council became aware of a problem when neighbours called their offices to complain about the smell.

You can’t imagine anyone ever living in this house again, but Pat says they will. The council will rehabilitate it, albeit it at a cost, and it will be snapped up.

Pat recalls another case where a house, overrun by vermin, had to be fumigated. At the end of the day, 207 rats were counted. Yet the tenant had said nothing and continued to pay rent. Again it was the neighbours that alerted the council.

One of the houses in the Cork City Council North Area that our reporter Catherine Shanahan visited. Picture: Larry Cummins

On call

Why does the council rely so heavily on the public to alert it to problems with its housing stock?

Pat says it’s largely down to caseload.

They have just five housing officers to look after the bones of 5,000 houses. That’s a caseload of approximately 1,000 houses each, making it impossible to keep abreast of every issue that arises.

In this respect, community engagement is essential. Pat says they welcome phonecalls to their office from tenants alerting them to problems. Some ring their offices anonymously to complain because they don’t like telling tales about neighbours. Or maybe they’re afraid of the backlash from those who engage in antisocial behaviour.

“We usually deal with houses when the problem is presented to us,” says Pat.

“If there were more of us, we’d be in a position to call out once a year.

“Ideally, each housing officer should have no more than 300-400 houses, 500 the absolute max, but we’ve lost staff in housing over the years. We used to have an office in The Glen, but it closed seven year ago.

“At one stage we had 14 housing officers, but they decreased over the years, and then the moratorium on recruitment meant people weren’t replaced.”

Waiting game

There are about 4,600 on the housing waiting list, according to the council’s housing chief, Valerie O’Sullivan. At a recent CIF builders’ briefing in Páirc Uí Chaoimh, Ms O’Sullivan said that “only 2,500 of that number is actively engaging with us in search of housing”.

I ask Pat why this is the case, and he says it’s hard to know. “We believe many are living happily where they are. Some have changed addresses and never informed the council and we have no means of contacting them.”

One of the houses in the Cork City Council North Area that our reporter Catherine Shanahan visited. Picture: Larry Cummins

Others, he says, build up their time on the housing list to get a place they really desire.

It seems people are prepared to wait. For those who want to live somewhere that’s highly sought after (in the North Area, this includes older areas such as Shandon St and Cathedral Road) — you might wait 10 or 11 years. These are more settled parts of the city, where some people own their own homes and there’s a greater sense of community and less chance of antisocial behaviour. Succession tenancies are popular in these areas, where offspring remain on in the home after the original tenant has died.

Pat says people are “generally pleased” when a house is allocated, but there are refusals. It could be something as superficial as the garden being too small or the house being more than 500m from the children’s school. Or someone might not want a terraced house or they might want a home closer to town.

Pat reckons the best excuse he ever heard was one given to Cork County Council, where a woman turned down a house overlooking Cork Harbour because she said it would make her seasick when she looked out the window.

Peace and goodwill

Pat and his colleagues find their job both interesting and challenging. Have they ever been threatened by tenants, particularly in the case of evictions?

A colleague says they don’t tend to go out around the estates on their own. Pat says he’s never been seriously hassled.

“It’s idle threats a lot of the time. If necessary, we can always come back another day, when things cool down. People can naturally get a bit emotional and we try to work around that.

“I think most people think we are very fair. We do make arrangements with people. We help them devise payment plans if they are struggling with rent.”

Pat says conflict is pointless and the best way to deal with tenants is through communication and agreement. “I think overall we’ve a fairly good rapport with the tenants. They know we are doing our best,” he says.