Councillors want to see more modular homes in Tipperary

A special grouping is to be set up within Tipperary County Council to explore ways of easing the housing crisis by allowing people to build modular homes and log cabins.

At the October meeting of the council held in Nenagh on Monday, a motion in the name of Cllr David Dunne calling for a working group to be set up was adopted by members.

The group will consist of councillors and officials from the local authority’s housing and planning departments.

The mission of the group will be to research the potential use of modular homes, including log cabins, as a means of providing temporary solutions to the current housing crisis.

Among the aims will be to develop a policy paper that can be submitted to central government, and that would hopefully see an easing of laws preventing the rollout of such temporary homes across the county.

Cllr Dunne said that the county of Tipperary was already “littered” with modular homes, and log cabins were being developed across the county, “left, right and centre”.

This was a situation that the council needed to tackle. There were companies selling modular homes to couples, but who were not  informing them that they could not occupy such properties without first securing planning permission.

Because of the way things were developing, the county needed a new model for those who saw their  only option as a modular home.

OTHER COUNTIES

Supporting, Cllr Ann Marie Ryan said a number of other counties had models in operation to allow for modular homes to be used as a swift response to the housing crisis.

Too many people in Tipperary in need of housing were putting their lives on hold, sleeping on couches in houses owned by their friends, while those in homeless hostels had no hope of getting a home of their own.

Cllr Mairín McGrath also supported the motion. She said it was time for the council in Tipperary to start thinking outside the box in order to tackle the crisis.

Many people felt their only choice was to buy a log cabin and put it in their parent’s garden.

Cllr Ryan O’ Meara said that as a young person, he yet had to acquire a home of his own.

He had explored the option of acquiring a log cabin a few years ago. One piece of advice he got was to “go ahead and chance it” without looking for planning permission, in the hope the council would not come after him.

Cllr O’ Meara said many people who now occupied log cabins had been caught like this and simply were not aware that they needed planning permission.

SHOCKED

He said he was absolutely shocked to see the amount of log cabins that were going up on country lanes around the Nenagh area while out canvassing for the local elections earlier year. He supported the motion because many saw a log cabin as their only option, and it would be good if the council had some new policy around the issue.

Cllr Seamus Morris said other councils such as in Laois, Cork and Limerick were finding solutions to roll out modular housing as a way of responding to the crisis. “I do not know why we cannot do the same,” he said.

He pointed out that the council had a large plot of land at Stereame in Nenagh where modular homes could be built.

‘AN EMERGENCY’

Cllr Morris said the housing crisis was now “an emergency” in Tipperary.

notices to quit

Many renters were receiving notices to quit from landlords, several of whom now wanted their properties back to accommodate their own grown-up children who were in dire straits seeking a home of their own.

“Our whole social housing policy is collapsing, and we have to declare housing an emergency,” said Cllr Morris, who praised the local authority’s housing staff for responding to the crisis as best they could.

Cllr John Carroll said many young people were emigrating due to the lack of housing, and that was very worrying.

Innovation was now required to come up with a solution, he added.