Sir, – In analysing the ongoing homeless crisis, it is clear that the Government and to a lesser degree other politicians and related spokespeople have decided that residential landlords are to blame. The recent large increases in rental prices are highlighted, while the massive drop in rents during the recession, the property tax, and the multiple increases in bank interest rates never get a mention.
It would appear that the full picture and indeed, the truth, doesn’t really matter because having someone to blame does.
Up to 36 per cent of the cost of all new residential buildings goes directly or indirectly (through levies, and so on) to the State. So, if one has a rental property, one has to achieve a decent rent, as up to a third of what you owe was ultimately charged by the State.
Furthermore, during the boom years, hundreds of millions of euro paid to county councils by developers as contributions towards social and affordable housing was wasted on other unrelated short-term projects. Nothing was done to stop this and now we have a large shortage of this type of accommodation.
It is with great irony that the current Government continuously picks on landlords, while every now and then launching another big long-term plan to solve the homeless crisis and housing problem. However, nothing really changes much. If the proposed legislation regarding landlords and tenants comes into play, some parts will be utterly unworkable, some potentially unconstitutional. But it will sound great close to an election.
Meanwhile a large number of these landlords face daily financial problems due to the large debts they have on their properties. The State has never done anything to assist them with their predicament. Again, it’s not a vote-getter. – Yours, etc,
BRIAN CULLEN,
Rathfarnham, Dublin 16.
Sir, – Do the left-wing economists recall the years of falling rents from 2008-2012? Was there any break for the beleaguered landlords in those years when the rents fell far below the cost of servicing the mortgages? How many such rental shortfalls have driven otherwise solvent people to the verge of bankruptcy – and beyond?
Now when the market is finally giving hope to those who have somehow survived, we hear the cry of “rent certainty”.
Freezing rents will do nothing to create new rental accommodation supply, will not improve the plight of tenants over the medium term, and unfairly penalises the landlords who currently supply the market. It is particularly unfair to the huge number of “accidental” landlords who still have a property that is under water from Celtic Tiger prices but who have since moved on somewhere else.
This proposal was not part of the FG/Labour programme for government in 2011 and it is fundamentally undemocratic for Labour to push for this as a twilight measure and tie the hands of the next government for four years. – Yours, etc,
EAMON DOODY,
Croagh, Co Limerick.
Sir, – If landlords and developers are not interested in building more homes to rent now, can you imagine what it will be like in a year’s time after a rent cap? – Yours, etc,
CHARLES McLAUGHLIN,
Dublin 8.