Proposed changes to rent rules will incentivise evictions, housing charity warns
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.
Focus Ireland's Mike Allen, Siptu's Ethel Buckley, Kate Mitchell, of National Women's Council, and Patrick Nevin, of Irish Traveller Movement, at the Raise the Roof press conference. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw
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
.'
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Housing RPZs: What will a new rental regulation system mean for renters in Ireland?
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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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Average monthly rent exceeds €2,000 for the first time
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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.
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And those two claims might seem to be at odds – but it's possible for them both to be true at the same time. Because Ryanair has a fairly modern fleet of planes, which are more energy efficient, and because it tends to fill more seats on each of its planes, it does mean that the amount of fuel burned per passenger tends to be a good bit lower than those using older planes, and with fewer bums on seats. And this is the emissions metric Ryanair likes to use – the amount of carbon emitted per passenger, per kilometre travelled. But of course Ryanair also carries a huge number of passengers each year – it had 203 million passengers in the year to July. That makes Ryanair the biggest airline in Europe by passenger numbers – and one of, if not the biggest in the world. And generally each of those is travelling hundreds if not thousands of kilometres at a time. And even if your per-passenger number is low – once it's multiplied by 203 million, and then by hundreds or thousands of kilometres, you're going to get a pretty big end figure. Needless to say, while per-passenger emissions aren't irrelevant, it's also true to say that the environment doesn't care how many people were involved in producing all of that carbon. The impact is has is just the same. What are some other examples of greenwashing? Well similar to those clothes recycling bins that shops have, there have been lots of recycling programmes set up that are of dubious value. Nespresso's pod recycling scheme has been accused of being inconvenient for users, while it is also not open to users of third-party pods. But by Nespresso's own data, just one third of its are sent back to be recycled. Similarly those packaging recycling stations in supermarkets are a form of greenwashing – because all they do is let the consumer dump the packaging in the shop, rather than having to bring it home and put it in their own bin. It doesn't actually reduce the amount of waste being generated by supermarkets and consumer goods in the first place, which is the real problem. Companies are also very good at making big promises around sustainability, but without any real enforcement in place to make sure they follow through. Coca-Cola, for example, is the world's biggest plastic polluter but, back in 2019, they promised to do something about that by sourcing half of their plastic from recycled material by 2030. But late last year, they softened that target significantly, aiming instead for 35% of its material to be recycled by 2035. Although you might not know it was a downgrade if you read their press release – which was titled 'Coca-Cola company evolves voluntary environmental goals'. It made no mention of the old targets. And of course many companies, including Coca-Cola, brag about their packaging being 100% recyclable – but that ignores the fact that only a small portion of plastic globally is recycled each year – most is dumped or burned. And even after consumers go to the effort of cleaning and properly disposing of plastic – and paying for it to be collected – there's still no guarantee it will be recycled. But sometimes greenwashing doesn't even need to get consumers lost in the weeds like that – it can be something as simple as a company literally making its packaging green, maybe adding a few flowers to make it look more natural, or packaging it in brown cardboard that looks more eco-friendly even if it isn't. And unfortunately, while there are resources online to help consumers to make good choices, most of the onus is on them to figure out what is genuinely good and what is simply marketing trickery.
