One in every two households in Galway City is living in rented accommodation, according to new Census details released by the Central Statistics Office.
Preliminary results published by the CSO on ‘Housing in Ireland’ show that the number of permanent households in the city on Census night in April 2016 was 28,827, up 4.1% from 27,697 in the 2011 Census.
Of these households, nearly half (48.5%) were in rented accommodation, which is well over the State average of 29.3%.
The figures show that 6,079 households had a mortgage or home loan, and just under one-quarter of all occupied dwellings called to by enumerators in the city were apartments.
There were 3,166 vacant dwellings recorded in the city (a rate of 9.4%) – of these, 1,329 were houses; 1,515 were apartments and 325 were holiday homes.
In identifying vacant dwellings, enumerators were instructed to look for signs that the dwelling was not occupied – for example, no furniture, no cars outside, junk mail accumulating, overgrown garden etc and to find out from neighbours whether it was vacant or not. It was not sufficient to classify a dwelling as vacant after one or two visits.
A breakdown of the private accommodation figures for the city show 5,882 were in detached homes; 10,702 in semi-detached; 4,757 in a terraced; 6,055 in an apartment block; 769 in a flat or apartment in a converted house or commercial building; 65 in a bed-sit; 32 in a caravan, mobile or other temporary structure and 597 did not state the dwelling type.
For more on the Census results, see this week’s Galway City Tribune. Buy a digital edition of this week’s paper here, or download the app for Android or iPhone.
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