THE NUMBER OF Notices to Quit from landlords to tenants in Ireland has spiked in recent months, prompting calls for urgent Government intervention to reduce evictions.
In the second quarter of 2022, the Residential Tenancies Board (RTB) revealed that 1,781 eviction notices were served.
This is an increase on the first quarter of 2022, where there were 1,132 eviction notices and significantly up on the second quarter of 2021, when there were 841 notices.
John Mark McCafferty, CEO of Threshold said that the private rental sector was facing “an onslaught of evictions”.
“Behind the statistics are individuals and families entering homelessness and losing their homes. It is imperative that the government moves quickly to formulate a specific, targeted strategy for evictions to help keep people in their homes and ensures some level of security around this.
“This strategy must focus on how small landlords can be incentivised to remain in the sector. There have been widespread calls for reform of the taxation of rental income. If this is what is needed to keep them active in the sector, then the Government must introduce and expedite these changes.”
Sinn Féin’s Housing Spokesperson, Eoin Ó Broin has called for “urgent action” to be taken to address the high levels of evictions.
This action includes, Ó Broin says, a temporary ban on evictions or tax reform within the rental sector.
“All options must be on the table for consideration including a temporary ban on evictions, an accelerated tenant in situ purchase scheme by Local Authorities, an acceleration of social housing delivery and tax reform in the private rental sector,” O Broin said.
However, it looks unlikely that the Government will implement an eviction ban, as they did during the height of the Covid-19 crisis.
While the number of eviction notices continues to rise, do tenants have rights when being served an eviction notice?
Length of tenancy
One of the key factors in whether or not a tenant can be evicted with or without a reason, depends on how long they have been leasing the property.
Under the Residential Tenancies Act, any tenancy – except fixed-term tenancies – can be ended for any reason in the first six months.
This means that a landlord who ends a tenancy does not need to provide a reason to a tenant who has lived in the property for less than six months.
After six months have passed however, under ‘security of tenure’ rules, landlords can only terminate a lease for several limited reasons.
These reasons include:
However, if a landlord intends to sell 10 or more properties within a development in a six month period, they are unable to terminate a tenancy unless the market value with a sitting tenant is over 20% below the market value for vacant possession, or stopping them ending the tenancy would cause ‘undue hardship’ for the landlord.
This is under the so-called ‘Tyrrelstown Amendment’, which was first introduced by the Government in 2016 to stop large numbers of tenants being evicted from developments at one time.
However, it does allow for up to 10 tenants to be evicted at any one time.
If a landlord does seek to terminate a lease, they must do so in writing to both the tenant and the RTB and they need to provide the tenant with a notice period.
These notice periods are set down under legislation, with the amount of time given changing depending on how long a tenant has lived in the property.
These notice periods are:
However, notice periods do not apply in a situation where either a tenant has breached the lease agreement or where they are in rent arrears.
Illegal evictions
There are situations where an eviction from a property is illegal.
According to Threshold, situations where a landlord prevents a sitting tenant from accessing their rented property either through force, intimidation or other means – including changing locks or cutting off household utilities – are classified as illegal evictions even if a valid notice of eviction is provided.
This also includes a landlord removing a tenant’s belongings from the property.
This is the case, even when a tenant is in rent arrears, as landlords must go through the legal process with the RTB complaints system.
Rising homelessness
Alongside rising levels of evictions, the number of people homeless in the state rose for the sixth consecutive month in June.
The number has risen significantly in recent months, with record levels of homeless adults now being reported by the Department of Housing.
In total, there were 10,492 people recorded as homeless in June, of which 5,177 were single adults.
Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien has said that the number of people accessing emergency accommodation “is a serious concern”, adding that delivery of social housing and having more housing supply was key to resolving the homelessness crisis.
However, Labour Party housing spokesperson Senator Rebecca Moynihan referred to the report as “disgraceful” and that it “represents a total systems failure and the wasted years of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil in power”.
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