Proposed changes to regulations in the private rental market will only act to incentivise evictions, the housing charity Focus Ireland has said.
Its advocacy director, Mike Allen, said he was surprised by the timing of the move, which is expected to see rent levels in newly constructed build-to-let properties in rent pressure zones (RPZs) tied to the rate of inflation rather than capped at 2 per cent.
It will also likely give landlords in affected areas the ability to reset rents between tenancies.
Mr Allen, who has not been party to the proposals going to Cabinet on Tuesday, said they “would clearly create incentives for landlords to evict their current tenants so that they could avail of higher, market-related rent for new tenants.
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“How do you make sure people are safe in those circumstances?”
He was speaking at a Raise the Roof press conference on Monday. The trade union-backed group has announced protests over a lack of housing provision, scheduled to take place outside the Dáil next Tuesday, June 17th, and in Cork on Saturday, June 21st. Mr Allen also questioned why the rent moves did not come as part of a broader housing plan due this summer.
The reported plan is “essentially a Government policy to increase rents” so as to stimulate investment, he claimed, but there was no reason to believe it would work.
“And if the only housing that can be produced is housing that people can’t afford, then that isn’t a solution to the housing crisis and it’s very, very far from being a solution to the homeless crisis.”
Social Democrats TD Sinéad Gibney, one of a number of politicians to attend Monday’s event, said the Government “needs to answer the question: when is rent too high?”
The Raise the Roof protest outside the Dáil at 6pm on June 17th, organised by Irish Congress of Trade Unions (Ictu), will coincide with a Private Members’ Bill tabled by Opposition parties. Sinn Féin’s housing spokesman Eoin Ó Broin said it would “focus on emergency action, things that the Government can do now”.
The measures, he explained, would include a faster return of vacant and derelict properties to social affordable use, as well as initiatives aimed at “protecting renters”.
Siptu deputy general secretary Ethel Buckley said the Government needed to ensure everybody had adequate housing and that workers were able to afford to live in the communities where they worked.
“This is a huge issue for the trade union movement,” she said, “one that comes up with our members all the time because if they are not struggling with housing themselves, they have grown-up kids who can’t afford to move out living with them or have other friends or family impacted by the crisis”.
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Other backers of the Raise the Roof campaign include advocacy groups representing women, the Traveller community, children and students.
Meanwhile, the Irish Property Owners Association said it was concerned the proposed reforms were over-complicated and that a six-year minimum security of tenure would have “a serious negative impact on private, non-institutional landlords, and on the rental market”.
“[They] are unfair on the individual who – for good reason – wishes to, and needs to, rent out their home for a short period, and points to a flaw on the part of the Government thinking which – by going after institutional landlords – has ignored the implications for individual, private landlords,” said its chairwoman Mary Conway.
