The government’s announcement today of new regulations on short-term holiday lets in areas of high housing demand such as Galway has been welcomed by local charity COPE Galway.
The charity has been to the fore in calling for such measures to be introduced to stem the loss of housing units to the short term holiday letting market through platforms such as AirBnB.
This announcement comes on the back of Wednesday evening’s publication by the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government of the latest homeless figures which show another increase in the numbers of people homeless and living in emergency accommodation both nationally and in the West region.
These latest figures report a total of 497 people in emergency accommodation in the West region including 76 families during the week of September 24th to 30th 2018.
Martin O’Connor of COPE Galway welcomed today’s announcement and said they hope it will make a real difference at a local level here in Galway.
Mr O’Connor said: “The loss of so many residential units to the short term holiday letting market in Galway when we have so many families and individuals across the community struggling to find a home simply has to be addressed and we hope that these proposed measures will do this.
“Although it is difficult to get an accurate picture of the numbers of housing units in full time use for short-term holiday letting purposes, a simple point in time search which we conducted earlier this week showed 50 complete dwelling units advertised as available on AirBnB compared to 66 rental dwellings advertised on Daft.ie in Galway City.
“This gives some idea of how significant an issue it is at a local level.
“We know that this won’t resolve the homelessness situation and housing shortage we face here in Galway but any measure that will bring more housing units into use to meet need is very welcome.”
