‘Homelessness, hostels or hotels’ facing tenants when landlords sell

What happens to tenants who have been renting under the HAP (housing assistance payment) scheme or RAS (rental accommodation scheme) in a straitened housing market when their landlord decides to sell?

“They are either ending up in Teach Fáilte, a hostel, a B&B or a hotel – still homeless or couch-surfing,” summarised Cllr Ken Glynn at a meeting last week of Westmeath County Council’s Housing, Community, Corporate and Cultural SPC.

Even worse is that some families are having to live apart.

The extent of the housing crisis was explained over and over by councillors who are particularly aggrieved at the lack of a system to purchase rented homes being offered for sale.

Cllr Mick Dollard said a lot of houses that had previously been available to HAP or RAS tenants are currently being sold, and he wondered where tenants of those properties can now find accommodation.

In cases where the people had been tenants for 10 or 12 years, he wondered if acquisition of homes for them could be an option – otherwise the only choice many of those families, have, he said, is to declare themselves homeless.

Cllr Dollard was concerned for one woman and her children, long-term tenants at a housing estate in Mullingar, recently given two months’ notice, while Cllr Vinny McCormack was also keen for the executive to outline the circumstances in which the council would consider an acquisition. Cllr McCormack said he had raised the case of a four-bedroom house in Ballymore which could have been acquired for €200,000 for a family in need, but had been told the council was not actively looking at acquisitions.

“Then on the other hand, I’m hearing of sales closing on acquisitions. So we’re a bit in the dark I suppose as to how the whole process around acquisitions works,” he said.

Cllr Andrew Duncan said there are owners of HAP properties who would be interested in selling to the council: “I know that from a housing perspective, it’s not going to do anything to your statistics, but it certainly may help in terms of value for money,” he said.

Adding to the frustration of councillors was the existence online of a newspaper report stating that the acquisition of houses for Ukrainian refugees may be sanctioned.

Cllr Glynn pointed out that where rents are increased, for RAS tenants there is the relief that the rental agreement is between the landlord and the council – but when it comes to HAP, the agreement is between the landlord and tenant and it is the tenants who have to shoulder the increase – and rents are in many cases now a four-figure sum.

“People on our housing list are low income earners,” he said.

The discussion arose during a presentation by council director of services Mark Keaveney who responded that acquisition is “always difficult”.

“Maybe members should be aware our discretion to acquire houses was removed late last year from this year, but we have been getting some acquisitions that meet certain criteria and the main criteria are one-off houses where there’s homelessness, where there’s four beds or greater.”

Mr Keaveney said there have been some discussions with the department and there may be some relaxations coming down the line, and also some relaxations of the rules on leasing.