Irish renters living in fear: ‘We can’t get mortgages, even though I’ve been paying rent for 12 years’

Many of Ireland’s renters are living in fear that one change in circumstance could leave them homeless overnight.

The main reason people contact homelessness-prevention organisation Threshold is that they have received an eviction notice from their landlord, according to chief executive John-Mark McCafferty. Their problem? They have nowhere else to go.

There are around 330,000 properties being rented in the private sector, according to the latest figures. No tenant is immune from losing the roof over their head if their landlord wants to sell or have a family member move in.

“In Ireland we have a thing called ‘no-fault evictions’, which means you can be evicted through no fault of your own,” says Lorcan Sirr, lecturer on housing at TU Dublin. “In every country you can be evicted if you don’t pay the rent, or if you trash the place...but there’s very few countries where you can be evicted just because your landlord’s mother-in-law wants to stay in the property two weekends a month,” he says.

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That is not to mention common life upheavals deeming a property unsuitable or the rent price too high – such as a relationship break-up, a housemate deciding to move out, or the arrival of a new baby.

In such situations it is not easy to simply find another place, with lack of supply forcing renters to compromise on location and convenience – that’s if they can in fact find another place that might fit their needs in the first place.

And, with rent having risen 9 per cent just in 2023, according to the Residential Tenancies Board (RTB), many find they are being priced out of the rental sector altogether.

The RTB’s price index of new tenancies for the final quarter of 2023 put the national standardised average rent at €1,415, with average rents ranging from €1,972 a month in Dublin to €740 in Leitrim.

[ Threshold survey finds three-quarters of tenants struggle to pay bills after covering rent ]

[ Ireland is spending big on housing. So why is the sector still in crisis? ]

Some who run out of options can turn to parents for help, but there are a number of assumptions being made when it comes to the so-called family safety net, says Sirr: “One is that people have families to move back to, and there’s also an assumption that parents want them back, which quite often they don’t.”

As well as that, “your parents might be living in Ventry, in Kerry, and you might be working in Dublin”, he says. In many such cases, “having parents that you can move back in with is irrelevant”.

We spoke to renters about how the precarious rental market affects their lives.

‘It’s just not having your own space and being able to do things without disturbing the other person’

Joshua Manuel-Oni (29), Dublin

Joshua Manuel-Oni grew up in Waterford and has rented in and around Dublin since he moved there in 2012 to pursue an undergraduate degree at University College Dublin. Now working in the tech industry, he rents a room with one other person in a two-bedroom apartment in a north Dublin suburb. The area is further outside the city than he would like, but the room was available within his price range at the time.

Although lucky with his current housemate, Manuel-Oni says he has had some awkward experiences living with strangers in the past. One, for example, would have people over and blare music late into the night; another did not uphold his standards of cleanliness, especially in their shared bathroom.

It’s still tough to share even when you have a like-minded housemate, he says. “It’s just not having your own space and being able to do things without disturbing the other person.”

Living outside the city, shortcomings in public transport also affect him daily. “The two biggest things I have to spend money on each month is housing and transport, and if those were substantially reduced and if transport was improved, I would see Ireland as this nearly amazing, perfect, wonderful place to live. But those two things make it so difficult,” he says.

It’s so difficult to try and save and be renting at the same time and you have to really reduce your quality of life, especially if you want to do it by yourself

—  Joshua Manuel-Oni

When Manuel-Oni rented with his siblings for a few years it felt “relatively good”. But since they have moved on to different places, “things have always felt temporary”.

When a room he was renting came with a mattress too small for him, his precarious situation presented him with a dilemma which is repeated any time the need for a big purchase arises: “You think, ‘If I’m going to be here for like, five years, what’s €200 over five years for a mattress? – it’s nothing.’ But if you think, ‘I’m going to be here for six months or one year or two years, should I buy something now and move it a lot, or do I wait until my next place?’ – and there was always that feeling.”

Being able to buy a home eventually doesn’t seem realistic, Manuel-Oni says: “It’s so difficult to try and save and be renting at the same time and you have to really reduce your quality of life, especially if you want to do it by yourself.

“Even if there were places I could afford, they wouldn’t be anywhere where I would want to live, where maybe my friends and family are, so it doesn’t seem like a realistic thing at the moment.”

‘I’m working in a Government job, and I feel so abandoned and neglected’

Laura* (31), Dublin

*”Laura” (not her real name) wished to have her anonymity preserved for fear her search for housing in the private rental sector would be affected.

In May of this year, Laura presented as homeless for the third time to her local council after being evicted from an apartment she had rented for five years in Dublin when her landlord decided to sell it. Between her shifts as a Government agency employee, often working nights, Laura has spent a number of weeks sleeping in her car.

“I just do not feel safe up there,” she says of the emergency accommodation provided by the State, where she was offered a bunk in a room shared with two other women. She felt uncomfortable with having to disturb the other women as she came and went from work at odd hours, and was most put off by the policy of accommodation-centre staff entering the room at night, she says, “to check no one has OD’d [overdosed]”.

Laura has had to park in different areas to remain inconspicuous to residents, moving between housing estates, the Phoenix Park and a spot close to her old apartment where her car was parked for years, “so I feel safe there,” she says. At 5ft in height, she says she lies across the back seats to try to sleep.

Apart from going to work, where Laura hasn’t talked to her colleagues about her situation because she wants it to remain a place where she can forget about her living situation, the gym is the only other place she can go to avoid the car, and to exercise and use the shower facilities.

The rest of her time and energy is consumed by the search for accommodation, constantly checking property listings for rooms, flats, studios and apartments with a rent she could afford to pay on top of her Housing Assistance Payment (Hap) allowance. She has so far been to “a good few viewings”, she says, but has had “absolutely no luck”.

As well as navigating the private rental sector, Laura has been on the waiting list for social housing since she was 19, and must log on every Friday to the council’s “choice-based letting” platform to apply for social housing for which she is eligible. She believes she has applied for at least 400 homes over 12 years.

The uncertainty of possibly having to move again is constant

—  Laura

“I said this to Threshold the other day, like, the trauma... I was dreaming about [former taoiseach] Leo Varadkar the other night, I was dreaming I was shouting at him. I’m definitely going through some sort of PTSD, especially the fact that it’s my third time [presenting as homeless], that I’m working in a Government job, and I feel so abandoned and neglected and forgotten about.”

Laura says she has no family safety net. Her father lives in a nursing home in England and her mother, she says, is as “a survivor” of an industrial school in the capital “and that led her into a life of addiction, basically due to the trauma that the State put her generation through”.

“It makes me so angry when I think about that because [of] the generational impact that those [industrial schools] have had... That’s the generational impact that it’s had on my family. And I’m trying to pull myself out of it so much. I’m trying to pull myself out of it for years.”

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Laura is wary that even if she does find a rental property, it could just be a matter of time before she finds herself in the same position: “I’m constantly living with the fear that it can just happen again, because as long as it takes for the council to offer me a property, the landlords can just keep selling.”

Update: Since we spoke to Laura, she has secured an apartment in the private rental sector after living in her car for almost a month and is “over the moon”, although, she says, “the uncertainty of possibly having to move again is constant”.

‘We were angry at the fact [the landlord] didn’t talk to us about it, and just sent an eviction notice’

Jamie Coleman (44), Cork city

Having been evicted from a house in Cork city when the landlord decided to return home from a brief stint living abroad, taxi driver Jamie Coleman and his partner, Justyna Byczkowiak (36), who works for an ecommerce company, settled for a new rental property that was “a bit of a dive”, Coleman says.

Along with their two daughters and Coleman’s son, the family decided they would turn the place into a home when the landlord informally told them they could stay there for six years until his own child was due to return from studying abroad, Coleman says.

“We did up the house at our own expense and we ended up fully furnishing it, so we borrowed money and bought everything. There was only one thing kept, and that was a coffee table, nothing else. I think it was about €15,000 that we borrowed.”

They put a lot of work into the house, filling in dents in the walls and painting it throughout: “The neighbours thought we were after buying it,” he says.

Coleman developed an informal relationship with the landlord. They would chat to each other about their lives, and he told him how much the family loved the property and asked him about the possibility of buying it from him. “He said that he wouldn’t say no to it, because I told him I can’t get a mortgage but I knew I could afford it if we did a deal. And I said you can laugh at me now or tell me it’s not possible, but he said everything is possible, so we’ll talk at the time.”

We’ve no security. Even though we’re very happy here, we love it – we do not feel secure

—  Jamie Coleman

Unfortunately for Coleman and Byczkowiak, that possibility was quashed when they received an eviction notice five and a half years after they first moved in, just before they were about to set out on a family holiday. “Initially we panicked,” says Coleman. “We were angry at the fact that he didn’t talk to us about it, and just sent us a solicitor’s eviction notice.”

Coleman says he then sent the landlord a letter, and when that went unanswered, a text, to ask once again if the couple could buy the house. The landlord told Coleman that he would not be selling the property, and that he would be moving into it himself.

[ My landlord is not acting on a ruling from the Residential Tenancies Board. What can I do? ]

Coleman later found out from their former neighbours that a different tenant had moved into the house after they had vacated it, not the landlord himself.

The couple then decided to take a case against the landlord to the RTB as he had failed to identify the intended occupant of the property. They sought guidance from Threshold, who talked them through the process. An RTB adjudicator determined that the landlord was liable to pay the couple €8,378 for “breach of landlord obligations pursuant to section 12 of the Residential Tenancies Act 2004″.

The family have found a new rental house in the countryside that they are happy with, but it’s less convenient than where they were, and their teenagers now rely on them for lifts to see their friends.

Coleman says the couple can’t get a mortgage because “we have a lot of overheads”, and “we find it difficult to get a loan”.

“We’ve got kids, we try to give them as best a life we can,” he says. “Obviously when we have to watch money, we watch money, but, like, our youngest child, she goes to dancing class, she goes swimming as well – that all costs money. Our older daughter, she goes horse riding, that’s the one thing that she loves is horses, and we try our best to not take that away.

“Thankfully we’re on the housing list,” Coleman adds, “but again, there’s nothing there.” He says a letter written by his neurologist describing the detrimental effect that stress has on him as someone living with multiple sclerosis “made no difference” to their position on the list.

Recently, upon receiving a registered letter from the letting agency that deals with their current house, “our hearts sank” he continues. Thinking it could be yet another eviction notice, “we both instantly felt sick”, he says, but it turned out to be notice of a routine building inspection.

“We constantly have that feeling. We’ve no security. Even though we’re very happy here, we love it – we do not feel secure.

“You know, we’re just waiting. Like, when’s it going to happen next?”

‘It’s just madness that we’re paying rents that are the same as a mortgage, but we can’t get mortgages’

Eliza Kelly (31), Galway city

Eliza Kelly from Kildare has rented in Galway city since 2012, when she first moved there to study. She now works in a gym as a personal trainer and rents a room in an apartment she shares with two others in the city centre.

It can be awkward, she says of her current accommodation, because her landlord rents rooms out separately, so she has no say in who she will be living with, although it has worked out so far. “It might be all right when you’re in college or younger, but when you’re a bit older you don’t really want to live with different people every six months.”

Kelly says her housing situation always “feels a bit temporary” and “the rug can be pulled out from under you – you’re settled, and then someone decides to move, or the landlord decides to sell and then you’re out looking for a house again”.

We can’t get mortgages, even though I’ve been paying rent for the last 12 years

—  Eliza Kelly

She considers herself lucky to be paying rent at the rate she is at the moment. “The first room I rented was €375, and then this one is €550 [a month]. That’s not even doubled, but I’d say most people would be nearly paying double what they paid 10 years ago.”

If she were to be evicted from her current place, she wouldn’t even look at renting again in Galway city, with current rent prices as high as they are, she says. (At time of writing there were 99 listings for rooms in shared houses in the Galway city area on Daft.ie, with prices starting from €600 a month, up to €1,100 per month.)

“It’s just madness that we’re paying rent that are the same as a mortgage, but we can’t get mortgages, even though I’ve been paying rent for the last 12 years,” says Kelly. “You would assume that would be a suitable track record for a bank, but it isn’t.”

“And the whole dog situation,” she adds with a sigh – “you can’t really have a dog.”

‘I won’t be allowed to borrow enough for a house, so I’ll have to bring more to the table’

David* (38), Cork city

*‘David’ wished to have his anonymity preserved for the privacy of those close to him.

David, an IT worker from Cork city, last year moved in with his parents, who are in their 70s, after his marriage ended.

He and his ex-wife had been renting a home together in the city with their young son, who has an intellectual disability; as his ex-wife is a full-time carer for their son, she is applying for State financial assistance to continue to rent the house for herself and their son.

Although David earns about €75,000 a year, he has not yet been able buy a house. When he queried his mortgage eligibility with a bank, he was surprised to hear his child maintenance payments for were regarded as a long-term loan, and therefore his allowable income would qualify him for a mortgage of about €170,000.

I will most likely have to have far in excess of a normal 10 per cent deposit because I won’t be allowed to borrow enough for a house

—  David

“So that’s not going to be enough to be able to afford a house on my own anyway, realistically, unless I go far away... and I have an anchor with regards to where my son lives, because of where his school is – I can’t go too far,” he says.

The second issue he faces is being able to save enough to buy: “I will most likely have to have far in excess of a normal 10 per cent deposit because I won’t be allowed to borrow enough for a house, so I’ll have to bring more to the table.”

In the meantime, because his son understands his grandparents’ house to be a place he visits rather than a place where he stays over, David has to stay at his ex-wife’s home to be with him whenever she stays with family.

He remains hopeful things will work out, however, with the goal of having a stable base for him and his son in sight.

“At the moment he has one house that he knows is his place – ideally in a couple of years I’d like him to have two.”

Tenants in need of free and confidential advice on housing issues can freephone Threshold on 1800454454 or visit threshold.ie/get-help.

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