House that for an experience?

You know, I really don’t like to start off yet another blog post by pointing out just how much my life has changed over the last year and a half, but it’s still true. Between job loss, burnout and subsequently being diagnosed with a treatable but ultimately incurable disease, it’s been quite the ride. And unfortunately, one of the consequences of these massive changes is that I’m facing the prospect of becoming homeless. It is not an imminent threat at the time I’m writing this blog post, but it is a very real possibility nonetheless. In a bid to prevent this fate, I was forced to apply for social housing support with Cork City Council back in May 2025. Local authorities like city and council councils are responsible for social housing here in Ireland. However, the chronic housing shortage that has Ireland in its grip also affects social housing, so there are far too few units for the number of applicants. As a consequence, anyone whose application for social housing support is placed on a waiting list, referred to as the Housing List, until a place becomes available.

Social Housing in Cork is handled by Cork City Council, meaning that you’ll get quite familiar with this building, City Hall,

It was this notoriously overtaxed system that I applied to join back in May 2025. There’s no use beating about the bush, the process is excessively long, slow, and bureaucratic. Given that social housing support is means-tested and subject to strict income limits, months and months of bank statements were required, as well as income tax statements to demonstrate that I’d been working and paying into Ireland’s social welfare system. The latter at least had the advantage of netting me a significant tax refund that paid for the MacBook I’m writing this post on. Unfortunately, in addition to being purely paper-based, the process is also very much opaque, with no information available as to the state of your application. Towards the end of the process, the council also required me to supply a sworn affidavit stating that I didn’t own any property either in Ireland or abroad. This wasn’t an issue for me as such, the request made sense and I definitely didn’t own any property. Still don’t, for that matter. However, the financial outlay this represented very much was an issue, as was the extra hassle of finding two solicitors, one to write it, the other to witness the signing, at a time when my undiagnosed MS was flaring up and my developer course was kicking into high gear!

Much of Ireland’s housing stock looks like this. Estates of semi-detached houses plastered all over the landscape with little regard for geography or infrastructure…

Still, by the end of November 2025, I’d been approved for social housing support. What’s more, the six months of processing time for my application had been credited to my housing account as time on the Housing List. With this this approval in hand, the process moved from paper-based to digital, as I gained access to CBL, the choice-based letting system operated by Cork City Council. This is the primary way to check for, and apply for, available council homes. Unfortunately, CBL is about as rudimentary as it gets. Remember how I praised the Department of Social Protection for the breadth of online services, as well as the user experience? Yeah, CBL is very much *not* that! The system looks, and feels outdated. Seriously, my first self-coded website looks better than this!

Honestly, I could’ve probably done better than that, and I’ve only built two websites in my entire life!

Now, to be fair, an outdated look isn’t automatically a bad thing. Unfortunately, the user experience itself is equally subpar. In general, the website works like every online store out there. You browse available properties, put them in your cart, and when you’re ready, you submit your selection to the council. This flow is pretty straightforward, with pop-up messages at all major stages. There’s also a tab containing a list of properties you’ve submitted. Crucially though, there is no email confirmation whatsoever. So, unless you’re the kind of nerd that screenshots everything, you’ll have no permanent record of properties you’ve submitted. This is where Cork City Council’s update frequency comes into play. The list of available properties is updated on a weekly basis. Unfortunately, as part of this update, the list of submitted properties is cleared, as it only shows the properties applied for within that same week. So once again, without screenshots, the user is left with no record, no paper trail.

The system provides warning messages and notices at every step of the process.

There are also plenty of confirmations asked of the user.

This screen is everything a user sees in the way of confirmation. Even though the council have the user’s email on file, no confirmation emails of any kind are sent!

There’s an overview of the properties submitted by the user. However, this is emptied every week when the property listings are updated. Don’t ask me why, I don’t get it either.

Then there’s the selection of available properties. Now, I’m only eligible for a single bedroom property, which I fair. I may have the mass of a couple but I’m still only one guy. Unfortunately, the vast majority of properties that show up on CBL have two or more bedrooms, the consequence of decades of failed social and housing policies in this country. I’ve so far only been able to apply for two suitable properties since gaining access to the system in November 2025. The selection of properties in general can only be described as anaemic though, and the physical state of some of these is just shocking. I guess that’s one of the advantages of being eligible for a single bedroom property, these are generally more modern, with many of them being newbuilds. 

Whether it’s in the suburbs…

…or in the city centre, apartments are few and far between in Ireland.

Whether it’s a newly built property or existing housing stock though, the properties available through CBL are generally rented out unfurnished, leaving it up to the social housing applicant to organise white goods, furniture, and, in the case of the older properties, even flooring, though there are grants and supports available for that. As of yet, this particular issue is generally academic for me. However, it has given rise to a new hobby of mine. Here in Ireland, all buildings must get planning permission, and the corresponding planning documents are available online, for free. As such, I was able to track down the floor plans of each of the properties I’ve applied for, and easily upload them into house/room planning tools such as the ones offered by IKEA. In addition to just simply giving me something to keep my mind occupied and allowing me to daydream of better days, this has also allowed me to get a general idea of the cost of fitting out a new place, something that should come in handy when the time comes to apply for that grant I mentioned earlier.

Now, a lot of what I’ve just written may come across as overly negative, so let me make this very clear: I am extremely grateful to be on the housing list and to have a tool like CBL available to help me look for places. I’ve always been a proponent of a strong social security net, indeed I feel like they are one of western civilisation’s biggest achievements. I also appreciate that Cork City Council is very much caught between a rock and a hard place when it comes to housing, being saddled with significant responsibilities by the government in Dublin, but with very little budget or legal authority to live up to said responsibilities. I get all that and as I said, I’m grateful to even have this lifeline available. However, I’d be lying if I said that the experience didn’t wear you down over time!