State spends over €2bn on HAP as gap widens between its limits and average rents
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The State has spent over €2bn on the Housing Assistance Payment (HAP) in the last four years, with the amount being paid per tenancy on the rise.
Under the scheme, where households eligible for social housing can receive support towards their rent to pay a private landlord, over €537m was paid out in the last year, according to new Government figures published this week.
This compares to €380m paid out for the scheme in 2019 and €152m in 2017. Critics of HAP say it is an extremely costly scheme that the Government has become increasingly reliant on because it is not building enough social housing.
Furthermore, rents have increased so dramatically in recent years that properties on the market are not within reach of many HAP recipients given the limits on how much the tenancy can cost.
In Cork City, for example, the maximum monthly rent limit for a single parent with a child is €900. The most recent rent report from Daft.ie showed the average rent in Cork City was now €1,870, more than double the maximum allowed on HAP.
However, each local authority also has the discretion to go above the rent limits on a case-by-case basis. The latest figures that such discretion was used in 65.7% of cases last year, with the limit exceeded by an average of 27.5%.
Across the State at the end of 2023, there were 56,848 active HAP tenancies. Just under one in four of these was a single parent with one child. A further 22% were single-person tenancies with 14% made up of a single parent with two children.
The average level of State support is also increasing. In 2018, the average monthly Exchequer cost of a HAP tenancy was €612. In 2023, this had risen to €754. There was also a rise in the number of HAP tenants moving into a form of social housing, with 4,614 such transfers last year.
The inadequacies of the HAP scheme have been repeatedly highlighted, including by the Simon Communities of Ireland which regularly publishes a report called Locked Out of the Market.
Its latest edition, published earlier this month, found that there were just 43 properties in the entire country available to rent within the discretionary HAP limits.
In 10 of the 16 areas surveyed, there were no properties available within these limits at all. This included the city centres in Cork, Limerick and Waterford.