Housing charity defends moving senior citizens out of homes and replacing them with students
A housing charity is defending moving senior citizens out of their homes and replacing them with foreign students.
CHAS (Catholic Housing Aid Society) operates 21 apartments at James McSweeney House in Dublin's inner city and has applied for planning permission to demolish the complex and replace it with 35 senior citizen apartments.
While they await a decision, CHAS has rehoused some of the elderly residents and is renting the apartments to foreign students for €800 monthly.
Residents were paying €238 a month.
CHAS CEO Miceal McGovern says they tried to offer the vacant apartments to Dublin City Council.
"We moved people out as early as possible so we don't run into positions where we have the planning permission and we're ready to go and we have no place for people to go to," said Mr McGovern.
"We're leaving properties empty in McSweeney House so we decided to do something about it. So we offered it to DCC (Dublin City Council) for homelessness accommodation, but they said that wasn't really suitable for them because it's one-bed apartments."
