A fifth of the national homelessness budget should be spent on preventing homelessness, renters’ advocacy charity Threshold has said.
In its quarterly impact report published on Tuesday the organisation also says the incoming government should introduce a renters’ deposit-protection scheme, robust rent regulation and a dedicated homelessness prevention strategy.
It says its tenancy protection advisers prevented more than 1,000 households in the private rented sector becoming homeless in the final three months of 2024, covering 1,387 adults and 1,060 children.
“As in previous quarters, most of these renters were at risk of homelessness because their landlord wished to sell their home,” says the report.
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In total Threshold supported 8,857 households – 11,459 adults and 7,280 children – in the final quarter.
The report contains the real-life case of a young mother, Amy, who was issued with a notice to quit her home of four years as the landlord said they wanted to move in.
“To her surprise, only a few weeks after moving out, Amy discovered that the home was being advertised online at a much higher price [than she had paid].”
The report explains: “As the property Amy lived in was in a rent pressure zone (RPZ), the landlord could only increase the rent by up to 2 per cent every 12 months”.
She learned her former landlord had not moved in but had redecorated and advertised the home on rental websites at an increased rent.
“Amy was upset, thinking about the stress she went through trying to find a new home for her family. She debated whether or not to submit a case to the Residential Tenancies Board (RTB) on the matter, but in the end decided to do so.”
A Threshold adviser “was able to help by pointing out the evidence that was critical to winning the case and by agreeing to represent her at the hearing”. The adjudicator found in her favour and ordered the landlord to pay €2,000 compensation.
Among the four actions the new government must take are a strategy for the private rented sector to include “rent regulation which can remain in place for the long term.
“The current RPZ system is being taken advantage of, especially when there is a change in tenancies, as seen in Amy’s case,” it says.
“The most effective way to end homelessness is to stop it before it begins. Therefore, Threshold recommends that local authorities be obliged to include homelessness prevention in their plans and protocols, while the government should increase investment in evidence-based homelessness prevention initiatives,” it continues.
It also calls on the next government “to allocate a budget for homelessness prevention, amounting to 20 per cent of all homelessness expenditure” and “establishment of a deposit protection scheme using a third-party custodial model”.
The programme for government commits to “a holistic, cross-departmental approach to homelessness prevention” and says the government will “review the effectiveness of the RPZs”.
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