National Housing Strategy for People with a Disability 2011 - 2016

6.25 The Act provides powers for the Minister to make regulations governing themandatory provisions that a housing authority must include in their allocation scheme,including how dwellings are allocated to households, and the order of priority under whichdwellings are allocated to households. Housing authorities will determine their allocationpriorities on the basis of the profile of housing need in their areas allowing them, whereappropriate, to target housing support to groups with specific housing needs.6.26 A further important development 37 provides housing authorities with certain flexibilityin their allocations scheme to take account, where possible, of the location and preferencesof households, and is intended to introduce some element of choice for households into theallocations systems. This is a key issue for people with disabilities who may wish to livenear their families and support networks and close to any care services that they may beavailing of.6.27 Section 22 of the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2009, which provides for theallocation of dwellings by a housing authority, was commenced in June 2010, followingwhich authorities had one year to make a new allocation scheme. Therefore, all housingauthorities were required to make a new allocation scheme by 13 June 2011. The newscheme, which replaces the old scheme of letting priorities, must be in accordance with theprovisions set out in the Act, and with the Regulations which came into force on 1 May2011, 38 Under the old schemes of letting priorities, authorities had complete discretion as tohow households were prioritised within those schemes, which meant that there was nostandardised approach as to how dwellings were allocated from authority to authority,including to people with disabilities. Furthermore, a variety of systems were used byauthorities in determining allocations, such as points based systems 39 , merit basedsystems 40 , time on list plus priority 41 , lottery system, choice based, etc.6.28 Creating a more uniform approach to the content and operation of allocationschemes is something that will be developed further as part of the review of housing policy37Section 22(6) of the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, 2009 provides that the allocation scheme mayinclude conditions subject to which the preference of a household to reside in a particular area or areas may betaken into account in allocating a dwelling to that household. The conditions include whether there are otherfamily members living in a particular area, whether the household has employment or is attending aneducation institution in a particular area or if they currently reside in a particular area.38Social Housing Allocation Regulations 2011 (S.I. No. 198 of 2011)39Points were assigned in relation to the circumstances of the household (e.g. current accommodation,homelessness, children, disability) in order to rank the relative priority of households for housing supportagainst one another.40Each application was unique and considered on it own merits. It was a judgement-based system.41The main principle of this system was first come first served, however, some households were assessed at thetime of application as having a certain priority and were placed at the top of the list.70