There were no properties available to rent within standard Housing Assistance Payment (HAP) limits across the 16 areas surveyed for the latest Simon Communities Locked Out of the Market report.<\/p>\n
Just 31 properties were available within any HAP limits, all of which were within the higher discretionary rates, which represents only 3% of all properties available to rent at the time of the study.<\/p>\n
The charity has said it highlights the continued difficulty for households relying on HAP to access the private rental market.<\/p>\n
HAP recipients must find their own accommodation within the private rental market.<\/p>\n
Over three days in December, 929 properties were available to rent at any price across the 16 study areas surveyed.<\/p>\n
While this represented a 12% increase compared with September 2025, it marks a 25% reduction compared with December 2024.<\/p>\n
As seen in many previous Locked Out of the Market reports, the supply of properties within HAP limits was predominantly in Dublin.<\/p>\n
A total of 27 of the 31 HAP properties were found across the three Dublin areas surveyed.<\/p>\n
In Dublin, the discretionary rate allows up to an additional 50% on the standard rate. This is limited to 35% elsewhere in the country.<\/p>\n
Portlaoise and Sligo had the lowest number of properties available to rent, with just one and four properties available respectively, across the three survey dates.<\/p>\n
Simon Communities of Ireland Executive Director Ber Grogan said that for individuals and families outside the capital, the prospect of finding a suitable and affordable home is becoming increasingly remote.<\/p>\n
This, she said, was due to discretionary HAP rates failing to keep pace with rising rents.<\/p>\n
Speaking on RT\u00c9’s Morning Ireland, she said the HAP is a “prevention mechanism” to stop people being forced into homelessness and also as an exit mechanism for people to leave homeless accommodation.<\/p>\n
“So it means that you’re languishing for longer in completely inappropriate, unsuitable accommodation,” Ms Grogan said, calling for HAP rates to be increased.<\/p>\n
72% of all rental properties available nationwide in the study were located in Dublin.<\/p>\n
There were no properties available for single-person or couple households within standard HAP limits.<\/p>\n
There were 19 properties available within discretionary HAP limits for singles located in Dublin City North (nine properties), Dublin City South (seven properties), and Dublin City Centre (three properties).<\/p>\n
There were no properties available to couples or one-parent households with two children within standard HAP limits.<\/p>\n
There were three unique properties available through discretionary HAP and an additional 11 that overlapped with properties available to families with one child.<\/p>\n
Ms Grogan said that one of the levers available to the Government is the enforcement of regulations around short-term lets.<\/p>\n
“This could potentially bring thousands of properties back into the market at a time when there is a dire shortage.<\/p>\n
“Government and local authorities must take urgent action to address the monopoly of short-term lets, particularly in the west of Ireland and more touristy areas,” she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There were no properties available to rent within standard Housing Assistance Payment (HAP) limits across the 16 areas…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":293945,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-293944","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=293944"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293944\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/293945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}