Hot Press examines the Housing Crisis

If you’ve been having trouble finding a place to rent, you’re not alone. If you’re stuck renting and unable to save a deposit to buy a home, you’re not alone. And if you’ve been living in substandard accommodation, facing huge rent increases, or dealing with a cowboy landlord, well, then you’re certainly not alone either.

In the last few years the number of people living in private rented accommodation in Ireland has exploded — resulting in far too many people chasing too few properties and sending rents rocketing. The problem, quite simply, is lack of supply. That’s not just my view: Stephen Large of Threshold, the national housing charity, agrees.
“One in five private homes is rented — it’s effectively doubled between the census in 2006 and 2011,” he says.
As with so many of our social problems, the boom and bust is at least partly to blame.
“At the boom’s peak, approximately 93,000 units were being built a year. In 2013, just 8,000 units were built. We’re suffering as a result of that. Year on year, you need around 25,000 to 30,000 units to meet normal demand. We were building way too many, then way too few. Housing construction and demographics don’t always align.”
Another factor putting pressure on the rental market is repossessions. Up to 30,000 homes could be repossessed over the next year or so, many of which are buy-to-let properties. Inevitably, tenants get squeezed.
“Repossession causes a lot of uncertainty for tenants,” Stephen explains. “They may get a knock at the door or a letter from some institution saying that they’re now looking after the property – and they don’t know if this is legitimate or not. We’ve been advocating that something similar to the moratorium on repossessions be applied to rented accommodation, where the tenant’s rights are protected. It is such a big issue.”
Landlords are not legally allowed to discriminate against potential tenants on grounds such as race, gender, sexual orientation, family status or disability, but anecdotal reports suggest that they do – and few people are willing to enter into the drawn-out complaints process.
“Their priority is finding somewhere to live,” Stephen resumes. “The difficulty for most people that contact us is that landlords will discriminate against them and can do so legally, simply because they are dependent on rent supplement.”
The difficulties renters face finding accommodation means they’re also wary about complaining about substandard flats.
“Most of the cases that come to us have to do with damp and ventilation, but there have been some horrific cases. We’ve seen properties which are completely structurally unsound: holes in walls; ceilings collapsed; exposed wires, and water leaking from pipes onto exposed wires. A lot of people say that they’re afraid to stand up for their rights for fear of the landlord retaliating and giving them notice, especially because there is a lack of move-on options out there. People have no choice but to put up with it.”
Researching this piece, Hot Press spoke to a number of renters who have been unfairly treated by landlords: almost everyone was afraid that if they spoke out publicly, they’d be given their marching orders.
While renting accommodation used to be a stepping stone towards home ownership, for many people this is now financially impossible. The Central Bank’s new mortgage restrictions may have been tweaked to allow first-time buyers to borrow up to 90% of a property’s value up to €220,000, but that still requires a hefty deposit. Speaking on The Pat Kenny Show on Newstalk, the Taoiseach, Enda Kenny, insisted that this was “achievable” — which only served to make him sound completely out of touch. The bottom line is that working-class or moderate income earners are priced out of the housing market, and rising rents mean many young professionals are too.
“In some parts of Dublin, you’re looking at 15% rent increases, but it wouldn’t be uncommon for people contacting us to be facing 20, 30, or even 40% increases,” says Stephen. “How are they going to save? People have to live in the interim.”
Rent increases are not tied to external factors such as inflation. Instead they are set by “market rent” — basically the going rate for similar properties in the same area. It is a vicious circle: because demand exceeds supply prices go up. And up. The only way to combat this, argues Stephen, is some form of rent control.
“People need stability,” he adds. “They need to know where they are going to be in a few years, so that they can plan accordingly. There are various models of rent control and we can learn from overseas experience: Germany has quite a sophisticated model, which could be adapted here.”
There’s a lack of political will to introduce rent control, and as Stephen notes, it is for the most prosaic reason of all.
“There seems to be this residual view that the market will take care of itself — but then, most politicians don’t live in the private rented sector and they don’t receive rent supplement. So what would they know about it?”