Opinion

Late on Monday night I saw the headlines on my news app – no extension to the ban

I couldn’t click on any of the stories. I got into bed and worried that I wouldn’t fall asleep

People queuing to view apartments in Dublin.
Gráinne Conroy
Wed Mar 08 2023 - 10:35

I found out that I’d been served an eviction notice one Friday evening last September. It was still bright and I was walking in the park. I felt like I’d been sucker punched. I sat down on the first bench I came to. The bench I landed on was one that I often see the same homeless man on. For as long as I’ve been going to that park he’s been there with the same blue sleeping bag.

I sat on the bench that Friday and looked at the document on my phone screen – the end date seemed kind of far away. I tried to formulate a way to cope. I decided that I had to get on with things in the short term – as if I could compartmentalise it until the new year.

The reason I had to instantly compartmentalise it was because I knew that it would be next to impossible to replace the flat I have. A flat I’ve lived in for more than three years. A flat that’s a home in an area I’m embedded in. A home that’s not my forever home but one that I’ve been grateful for every single day since I moved in.

When the eviction ban came in it sounded like a blanket action. How it affected individuals though depended on their termination date and the length of their tenancy. In my case, my termination date moved from March 31st to May 1st – 31 additional days.

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There were repeated reassurances that there was no “cliff edge” to the eviction ban, and that many renters are protected until June. The only renters protected until June are those who’s tenancy was less than one year. Any renter covered by the ban who had a tenancy of longer than one year has a new eviction date of May 1st at the latest (the exact dates are between April 1st and May 1st).

The eviction ban wasn’t really about banning evictions though. It was an acknowledgement of the wider context – a complete housing emergency.

Little of that context changed over the winter months. Instead, by the start of spring it seemed even worse. Homelessness and rent rates were at their highest level on record. The cost of living crisis was ravaging. The Government had run out of accommodation for migrants – and hotels with current accommodation contracts had notified the State that they were switching back to tourism for the summer season.

It seemed inevitable that there would be some sort of an extension to the ban. A similar eviction ban in Scotland was extended until the end of September. I started to worry though as soon as I heard the narrative portraying a ban extension as a political seesaw. Portraying it as some sort of zero sum game between renters with termination notices and landlords returning from abroad.

I had a personal stake in the outcome of the ban but I also understood the dynamics at play for landlords. The private rental market has become something very different over the past decade plus. Renting is no longer a stop gap on the way to home ownership. That’s changed the situation for landlords – they’re often now in the business of more long-term home provision.

There’s another dynamic at play too though – one I hear much less political discussion about. In my area landlords are selling but the properties aren’t being sold to residential buyers or to individual landlords. Instead they’re going into the hands of large real estate investment companies. Properties go back on the market with significantly higher rents.

All last week the debate tipped from side to side and all week I was glued to news sites for any updates. As I clicked around on articles a message came in from the group WhatsApp for my street – to promote the local green grocer. Replies flooded in ­– with a particular hot tip for their in season blood oranges. I hate group WhatsApps – I leave most of them – but I’m in love with this one and I don’t want to have to click exit.

By the weekend the seesaw seemed to be tipping towards some manner of a ban extension. By Saturday though I was at the doctor’s getting a prescription for a chest infection. I wondered if a week of news overload had contributed to it – it didn’t seem entirely unrelated.

Late on Monday night I saw the headlines on my news app – no extension to the ban. I couldn’t click on any of the stories. I got into bed and worried that I wouldn’t fall asleep. I rolled over and fell asleep anyway. Maybe it was the medicine I’m on – which is making me drowsy. Or maybe I’d underestimated how used I’m getting to this Government’s indifference.

The next day I listened to the measures mooted to support affected renters – none of which are immediately practically implementable. Affected renters were effectively told to eat cake.

I went back to the park. I wasn’t surprised to see that same homeless man on the original park bench. He was wrapped in the same blue sleeping bag and he was shivering with the cold. I sat on another bench and watched an older woman approach. She was praying with rosary beads. And as she passed me – for whatever it was worth – I prayed too.

Gráinne Conroy is a writer based in Dublin.