Family earning over €1,000 per week to be evicted

antoobrien

A judge has order the eviction of a family of 5 adults, with a total known weekly income of €1,180 (and undisclosed earnings of the father - a taxi driver), who have amassed arrears of €20,000 after not paying rent for 18 months. They had their rent reduced from €188 to €169 per week by SDCC (article doesn't say when). There have been 4 previous attempts to evict but the council have backed down in each case. FFS their rental cost is less than 15% of the total income of the household but they were allowed to run up massive arrears.

This article shows up the primary reason we are where we are:
Chancers at all levels of society
A remarkable unwillingness of the authorities to do their jobs and pursue contract breakages (in this case not paying rent for 18 months)

It's high time we stopped this crap and prosecuted everybody top-down and bottom-up for this kind of behaviour.

donalg1

antoobrien wrote: »

A judge has order the eviction of a family of 5 adults, with a total known weekly income of €1,180 (and undisclosed earnings of the father - a taxi driver), who have amassed arrears of €20,000 after not paying rent for 18 months. They had their rent reduced from €188 to €169 per week by SDCC (article doesn't say when). There have been 4 previous attempts to evict but the council have backed down in each case. FFS their rental cost is less than 15% of the total income of the household but they were allowed to run up massive arrears.

This article shows up the primary reason we are where we are:
Chancers at all levels of society
A remarkable unwillingness of the authorities to do their jobs and pursue contract breakages (in this case not paying rent for 18 months)

It's high time we stopped this crap and prosecuted everybody top-down and bottom-up for this kind of behaviour.

Problem is in the legislation on these kinds of things, you see you have to follow certain steps to get someone evicted as in you need to issue the appropriate warnings, and in some instances if the tenants make a payment it sort of resets the whole thing and then the process has to start all over again, and in a lot of cases that end up in court the Judge would order them to pay a nominal amount per week say enough to cover their rent €188 in this case plus an extra €20 on top until the arrears are paid which obviously never would be.

Then you have the cost of the legal proceedings to take into account also when bringing a case like this to court, however, in the above case I do think they should be turfed out without the need to go to court but if this was to be done chances are they will present themselves at the housing department claiming they are homeless!!

whippet

i'd like to see the Freemen and the likes of Dessie Ellis / Claire Daly types justify this.

they should not only be evicted the rent arrears should be withheld from future social welfare payments.

I'm sure revenue will be having a look at the books and tax returns for the taxi driver !

antoobrien

donalg1 wrote: »

Problem is in the legislation on these kinds of things, you see you have to follow certain steps to get someone evicted as in you need to issue the appropriate warnings

Yeah but they've been extracting the urine on this for 18 months and did get the appropriate warnings - this is the 5th time they've been served with an eviction notice.

Given that their combined income is greater than 50k (that's assuming the taxi only breaks even) it's clear that they can afford to rent a house (4 bed houses are available for less than 1k/month if they look).

Villa05

Homeowners have being getting away with not paying their commitments. It was only a matter of time before renters started doing the same. We r a failed state after all!

antoobrien

Villa05 wrote: »

Homeowners have being getting away with not paying their commitments.

Renters have been at it for longer than homeowners. Refusing to pay rent to some degree is a constant worry for landlord and not a new one by any means.

creedp

antoobrien wrote: »

Renters have been at it for longer than homeowners. Refusing to pay rent to some degree is a constant worry for landlord and not a new one by any means.

I would have thought that this is a bigger problem for councils that private landlords. Although private landlords have difficulty with tenants paying rent there is a much lessor chance they will have people sitting in their property rent free for extended periods of time such as is the case here.

murphaph

creedp wrote: »

I would have thought that this is a bigger problem for councils that private landlords. Although private landlords have difficulty with tenants paying rent there is a much lessor chance they will have people sitting in their property rent free for extended periods of time such as is the case here.

This is not the case. The legal process grinds along at glacial pace. A private landlord could easily be deprived of his property with no rent (and possibly under severe financial pressure himself) for 18 months before getting an order for possession.

The landlord first has to jump through the (useless) PRTB hoops (which he funds!) before even being allowed to go to court in the case of residential property.

I am an accidental landlord (former home rented out and father left some commercial property when he died) and I would not countenance ever taking on more Irish property, residential or commercial. The law totally favours the sitting tenant. I am blessed with my residential tenants and do everything I can to work with them but we've had to go to court on the commercial side when a tenant simply stopped paying rent for almost 2 years. We eventually got a court order but never got one penny of the lost rent and to dd insult to injury the court ordered that we should be liable for the unpaid rates racked up by the overholding tenant.

It also costs a significant amount of money to take someone to court, money you never get back.

The whole thing needs serious reform for the benefit of all.

Delancey

Clearly these people have mercilessly exploited and abused the system and should have been evicted long ago - the question that the Local Authority must answer is how / why was this situation allowed to continue ?

cricketfan

Agree with OP. Chancers at all levels of society. They'd probably heard urban myths about being able to just stay there for life and that they'd never go so far as to be evicted.

To be fair to the authorities they are beginning to tackle these situations but for too long (decades) have just not been professional enough in their dealings which has led to wide scale rent arrears across the local authority sector.

Always suspicious when I see stories like this in the media. Is it the full story, a lot of times it isn't. I suspect this family have other issues as well which are not being reported here.

antoobrien

Delancey wrote: »

Clearly these people have mercilessly exploited and abused the system and should have been evicted long ago - the question that the Local Authority must answer is how / why was this situation allowed to continue ?

I'd wager that part of the reason is that the landlord is almost always seen as the enemy and the tenant a victim in these situations, no matter how outlandish the behaviour of the tenant.

donalg1

Delancey wrote: »

Clearly these people have mercilessly exploited and abused the system and should have been evicted long ago - the question that the Local Authority must answer is how / why was this situation allowed to continue ?

Well they were served with an eviction notice on 5 occasions so the LA must have been doing something, the tenant then pays a couple of weeks rent enters an agreement and restarts the process again causing it to go on for so long.

Lantus

whippet wrote: »

I'm sure revenue will be having a look at the books and tax returns for the taxi driver !

You would think that gov departments would show initiative but thats just not the case. They are bureaucrats at heart and need forms filled out in triplicate by a dozen people and support from a local TD and priest before they would venture out on a limb like this.

Your expecting critical thinking from people who have been trained to obey and not think.

Sleepy

donalg1 wrote: »

Well they were served with an eviction notice on 5 occasions so the LA must have been doing something, the tenant then pays a couple of weeks rent enters an agreement and restarts the process again causing it to go on for so long.

Odds are this is exactly what has happened.

Lantus wrote: »

You would think that gov departments would show initiative but thats just not the case. They are bureaucrats at heart and need forms filled out in triplicate by a dozen people and support from a local TD and priest before they would venture out on a limb like this.

Your expecting critical thinking from people who have been trained to obey and not think.

You're not being quite fair here. I'm the first to criticise public sector inefficiencies or to call for the wasters in the PS to be fired. It's highly, highly unlikely that no-one in the relevant council wouldn't make the call to evict these chancers if they had the power to do so. Perhaps it's a throwback to our colonial past and history of absentee landlords but the tennancy laws in this country are very much as murphaph describes them above: very one-sided in favour of the tennant and the type of person who's lived on welfare most of their lives knows exactly how to exploit the system.

K-9

Sleepy wrote: »

You're not being quite fair here. I'm the first to criticise public sector inefficiencies or to call for the wasters in the PS to be fired. It's highly, highly unlikely that no-one in the relevant council wouldn't make the call to evict these chancers if they had the power to do so. Perhaps it's a throwback to our colonial past and history of absentee landlords but the tennancy laws in this country are very much as murphaph describes them above: very one-sided in favour of the tennant and the type of person who's lived on welfare most of their lives knows exactly how to exploit the system.

The PRTB only came in a few years ago.

I really don't get this renters vs. owners divide. Murphaph lives in Germany AFAIK, which has much stronger tenant laws and a renting culture. As he is a Landlord and lives in Germany, I'm sure he can point out the German system and see if we can learn anything.

Sleepy

He lives in Germany but the properties he refers to are in Ireland.

AlekSmart

cricketfan wrote: »

Agree with OP. Chancers at all levels of society. They'd probably heard urban myths about being able to just stay there for life and that they'd never go so far as to be evicted.

To be fair to the authorities they are beginning to tackle these situations but for too long (decades) have just not been professional enough in their dealings which has led to wide scale rent arrears across the local authority sector.

Always suspicious when I see stories like this in the media. Is it the full story, a lot of times it isn't. I suspect this family have other issues as well which are not being reported here.

You can be quite confident that there are other ....."issues" at play,not all of them as clear-cut as non-payment of rent.

The Country is currently standing on it's head with none of the basic rules of civilization,economics or anything else for that matter,applicable.

Sadly,to date,I see little evidence of any Leadership willing to call a spade on it ?

murphaph

K-9 wrote: »

The PRTB only came in a few years ago.

I really don't get this renters vs. owners divide. Murphaph lives in Germany AFAIK, which has much stronger tenant laws and a renting culture. As he is a Landlord and lives in Germany, I'm sure he can point out the German system and see if we can learn anything.

I own my own home in Germany so don't deal with any landlord/tenant issues here but I know stuff from other owners in the building who rent their property out.

Germany has strong laws that generally favour the tenant too BUT if a tenant causes damage to property etc. then they will actually be punished in a meaningful way by the courts system. You can't disappear into the ether either the way you can in Ireland: in Germany (as in almost every country in Continental Europe) registration of abode is compulsory. You can't easily function without being registered to your real address. In Ireland if someone owes you money it's quite possible you'll never find them again!

The greatest fundamental difference however is the German tenant versus the Irish tenant. There are simply far fewer chancers in Germany per head than in Ireland. Only a tiny minority of German renters will ever try to screw their landlords over. They move in, abide by the terms of their lease and move out, leaving the place as they found it, decorating if needs be.

There are certainly chancer landlords in Ireland too, but the law tends to favour being a chancer on the other side of the fence tbh.

The law should be overhauled completely. The PRTB should by like An Bord Pleanala: their decision should be final and you should only be able to appeal on a point of law. They should reach decisions a lot faster than they currently do and they should be co-funded by tenants and landlords (presently they are exclusively funded by the landlords).

There should be a blacklist of bad landlords and tenants so people can check the internet to see if someone has been misbehaving. None of this is easily achievable without the introduction of national ID cards linked to abode of course.

The main benefactor of the current system is without doubt the legal profession however (even more than rogue tenants), who almost always get paid (most won't even start proceedings without you ponying up several grand up front).

n97 mini

Why don't social welfare recipients in local authority housing have rent deducted at source?

murphaph

n97 mini wrote: »

Why don't social welfare recipients in local authority housing have rent deducted at source?

I'd go further. Anyone in receipt of welfare should have their local authority rent deducted at source like you suggest and anyone in private rented accomodation (remember Ireland does NOT have anywhere near enough social housing to house all those that need it, so private landlords provide housing that the state is unwilling to provide) on rent supplement should have their rent supplement payments paid directly to their landlord. There are far too many horror stories of such tenants hoarding their rent supplement payments and not paying their rent or paying only part of it.

AlekSmart

murphaph wrote: »

Germany has strong laws that generally favour the tenant too BUT if a tenant causes damage to property etc. then they will actually be punished in a meaningful way by the courts system. You can't disappear into the ether either the way you can in Ireland: in Germany (as in almost every country in Continental Europe) registration of abode is compulsory. You can't easily function without being registered to your real address. In Ireland if someone owes you money it's quite possible you'll never find them again!

The greatest fundamental difference however is the German tenant versus the Irish tenant. There are simply far fewer chancers in Germany per head than in Ireland. Only a tiny minority of German renters will ever try to screw their landlords over. They move in, abide by the terms of their lease and move out, leaving the place as they found it, decorating if needs be.

There are certainly chancer landlords in Ireland too, but the law tends to favour being a chancer on the other side of the fence tbh.

The only problem with Murphaph's otherwise excellent post,is that it flies totally counter to our need for a bogeyman to excuse our abberant behaviour and to act as a deflector mechanism in case anybody seeks to impose some form of responsibility on us.

Just listen to the stuff peddled by some of the left-wing politicians which is largely predicated upon this old Top-Hatted Evil Landlord vs the poor downtrodden pesantry tosh.....

Sometimes I feel it's backwards we are headed......:rolleyes:

n97 mini

murphaph wrote: »

There are far too many horror stories of such tenants hoarding their rent supplement payments and not paying their rent or paying only part of it.

There are. I know people who have been personally shafted by tenants.

51% of the private rented market is on rent allowance. This is too high, but I also suspect that Rent Supplement is probably too easy to get.

murphaph

n97 mini wrote: »

There are. I know people who have been personally shafted by tenants.

51% of the private rented market is on rent allowance. This is too high, but I also suspect that Rent Supplement is probably too easy to get.

I suspect it's possibly so high because the state doesn't want to be in the business of housing people in a big way (the way it is in the UK for example) and because renting is seen by the majority of gainfully employed people as a poor man's option, something to "move on from" towards home ownership.

Gainfully employed people typically don't want to be renters, but they are unfortunately the suckers as the people who know how to play the system live in equivalent housing for decades at almost no cost to themselves.

We need reforms of the law to make being BOTH a landlord and a tenant more appealing, so people have a genuine choice-do I pay for my housing through rent or through mortgage interest. At the moment there is a fear on the side of good landlords of bad tenants "gaining control" of their property and there's a fear on the side of good tenants of "being thrown out at a moment's notice" by rogue landlords.

Tenants should have strong rights to security of tenure BUT with those rights should come responsibilities and a dereliction of those responsibilities should lead to consequences, including losing the roof over your head (if a mortgage holder decides not to pay, they will be evicted). We should let the rogue tenants and landlords find each other and let the good tenants and landlords find each other (through a black/white list system) and that way the decent people on both sides in the system will get satisfaction.

More renting means more competition in the rental sector. It means cheaper rents and rent increases should be controlled as they are in Germany. I would trade a stable, controlled market for stable renters anyday. Germany has very little social housing, even in the former east, most of those tower blocks have long since been sold off to private companies who (generally) manage them more effectively than the state did before, keeping them clean and graffiti free. With a proper system, the state doesn't have to be directly invloved in housing provision but the state must protect those that do provide housing and those that do genuinely need housing from the minority of assholes in the system who wreck it for everyone.

AlekSmart

murphaph wrote: »

I suspect it's possibly so high because the state doesn't want to be in the business of housing people in a big way (the way it is in the UK for example) and because renting is seen by the majority of gainfully employed people as a poor man's option, something to "move on from" towards home ownership.

Gainfully employed people typically don't want to be renters, but they are unfortunately the suckers as the people who know how to play the system live in equivalent housing for decades at almost no cost to themselves.

We need reforms of the law to make being BOTH a landlord and a tenant more appealing, so people have a genuine choice-do I pay for my housing through rent or through mortgage interest. At the moment there is a fear on the side of good landlords of bad tenants "gaining control" of their property and there's a fear on the side of good tenants of "being thrown out at a moment's notice" by rogue landlords.

Tenants should have strong rights to security of tenure BUT with those rights should come responsibilities and a dereliction of those responsibilities should lead to consequences, including losing the roof over your head (if a mortgage holder decides not to pay, they will be evicted). We should let the rogue tenants and landlords find each other and let the good tenants and landlords find each other (through a black/white list system) and that way the decent people on both sides in the system will get satisfaction.

More renting means more competition in the rental sector. It means cheaper rents and rent increases should be controlled as they are in Germany. I would trade a stable, controlled market for stable renters anyday. Germany has very little social housing, even in the former east, most of those tower blocks have long since been sold off to private companies who (generally) manage them more effectively than the state did before, keeping them clean and graffiti free. With a proper system, the state doesn't have to be directly invloved in housing provision but the state must protect those that do provide housing and those that do genuinely need housing from the minority of assholes in the system who wreck it for everyone.

Top quality Post Murphaph !...Should be a sticky on this topic.

The bottom line on this issue is the Irish State MUST get more involved in the Private Rental Accomodation market.

However,few Irish appear to understand that State INVOLVEMENT does not necessarily equate to State OWNERSHIP.

Currently our national Private Tenancy arrangements are overseen by a Dáil comprised,rather uniquely,of people with almost no understanding of how the European Private Rented accomodation market functions.

Worse still,few of our elected representatives appear interested in actually learning about a different way.

Instead,our Government,with substantial cross-party support and involvement,persist with policies designed to "Kick-Start" or more accurately "RE-Start" the private housing market.

This is lunacy,as the country simply does not have an economic profile which can support universal domestic property OWNERSHIP.

It is madness to propagate the notion that the majority of our population can own their own dwelling UNLESS,in addition to purchase costs, they are prepared to pay substantial ongoing amounts of money to fund this property OWNERSHIP.

Widespread,properly managed and regulated Private Rental DOES offer the ability for people to secure stable,long-term,flexible and AFFORDABLE rental levels thus freeing up significant income which may then be regarded as "Disposable" and thus used to stimulate all thos other sectors of the Irish Econopmy currently withering on the vine.

However,the current Private Rental system is most certainly NOT Fit-For-Purpose and will only cause further problems if left as it is.

brianb10

I know of two couples, one of whom are living an extravagent lifestyle which is putting them in arrears, they still have their country club memberships, the wife comes home with designer bags full of clothes shopping every week etc etc They could easily make their full mortgage payments if they cut back a little like the rest of us.

The second couple are in a fair amount of negative equity and are deciding to strategically default with the hope of a write down. They are sending €1000 a month into their parents bank account so as to leave themselves with no money left each month to pay the mortgage.

I would hope if some sort of debt forgiveness comes along that these type of people will not get a write down and that their accounts are scrutinised to ensure that they genuinely cannot afford the mortgage and are not doing anything dodgy or living extravagently.

n97 mini

brianb10 wrote: »

I would hope if some sort of debt forgiveness comes along that these type of people will not get a write down and that their accounts are scrutinised to ensure that they genuinely cannot afford the mortgage and are not doing anything dodgy or living extravagently.

I don't think you'll have much to worry about. I think pigs will fly before there's debt forgiveness, as no system will work.

Degsy

Sleepy wrote: »

I'm the first to criticise public sector inefficiencies or to call for the wasters in the PS to be fired. .

What has the PS got to do with the OP? Change the ****in record will ya?

Who,in the PS are you calling "wasters" exactly?

murphaph

Degsy wrote: »

What has the PS got to do with the OP? Change the ****in record will ya?

Who,in the PS are you calling "wasters" exactly?

Perhaps you should read the thred more carefully

Sleepy didn't criticise anyone in the PS, the opposite in fact :rolleyes:

Sleepy

Degsy wrote: »

What has the PS got to do with the OP? Change the ****in record will ya?

Who,in the PS are you calling "wasters" exactly?

LOL, I was defending the PS in that post...

Who are the wasters? The one's who don't deserve their salaries. The ones the good workers keep in jobs by staying in unions with them. Much of the upper and mid-level managers who wouldn't last 6 months in an equivalent position in the private sector. You know, the jobsworths, dossers and incompetents that give the sector a bad name and make their colleagues lives a misery...

Degsy

Sleepy wrote: »

LOL, I was defending the PS in that post...

Who are the wasters? The one's who don't deserve their salaries. The ones the good workers keep in jobs by staying in unions with them. Much of the upper and mid-level managers who wouldn't last 6 months in an equivalent position in the private sector. You know, the jobsworths, dossers and incompetents that give the sector a bad name and make their colleagues lives a misery...

I'd love to see all these wonderful "private sector" staff working as Guards,ambulance crew,nurses and teachers....which,i presume there's a private sector equivalent of?

donalg1

I see this has gone off topic and straight onto another public v private thread. What a surprise.

K-9

I don't know how the PS got mentioned but the thread has got nothing to do with it, completely off topic. Anymore off topic posts will lead to bans.

Tragedy

The percentage of the market that Rent Supplement funds is not 51%. That has been thoroughly debunked in other threads, although so far the DSP has completely ignored my e-mail pointing out the elementary and obvious flaw in their figures.

Real figure is likely to be around 20%, and that 20% is at the lower end of the market (i.e. the % of tenants may be ~20%, but the % of the rental market funded by DSP may be 12%).

who_ru

antoobrien wrote: »

A judge has order the eviction of a family of 5 adults, with a total known weekly income of €1,180 (and undisclosed earnings of the father - a taxi driver), who have amassed arrears of €20,000 after not paying rent for 18 months. They had their rent reduced from €188 to €169 per week by SDCC (article doesn't say when). There have been 4 previous attempts to evict but the council have backed down in each case. FFS their rental cost is less than 15% of the total income of the household but they were allowed to run up massive arrears.

This article shows up the primary reason we are where we are:
Chancers at all levels of society
A remarkable unwillingness of the authorities to do their jobs and pursue contract breakages (in this case not paying rent for 18 months)

It's high time we stopped this crap and prosecuted everybody top-down and bottom-up for this kind of behaviour.

have you contacted your local TD about this situation being allowed to continue?

i am going to.

Villa05

Tragedy wrote: »

The percentage of the market that Rent Supplement funds is not 51%. That has been thoroughly debunked in other threads, although so far the DSP has completely ignored my e-mail pointing out the elementary and obvious flaw in their figures.

Real figure is likely to be around 20%, and that 20% is at the lower end of the market (i.e. the % of tenants may be ~20%, but the % of the rental market funded by DSP may be 12%).

Hi T, Can you share you data with me, I recall a figure of 95,000 (when question was posed in the DAIL) beneficiaries of rent allowance. What are the flaws that you say
Thanks in advance

Tragedy

Villa05 wrote: »

Hi T, Can you share you data with me, I recall a figure of 95,000 (when question was posed in the DAIL) beneficiaries of rent allowance. What are the flaws that you say
Thanks in advance

~95k is the correct figure for the amount of tenancies paid for via Rent Supplement.

Strangely, the PRTB has over 500k registered tenancies - and has had for several years.

Already we're down to below 20% of the public, legitimate market being paid for via RS. Factor in that many of the registered tenancies will also be sublet, and we could be at an even smaller figure. Then add in unregistered/cash in hand rental market (particularly common among live in mortgage holders renting out rooms either via rent-a-room or cash in hand, and among student populace) and I struggle to believe that even 10% of the market is funded via RS.

Source for the PRTB figure.

user.name

There is plenty of people in Ireland that can't honestly pay their mortgage and get evicted. Yet this family is earning a good wage, and still couldn't pay money that many people earning half of much of them can pay. They have been warned, they should be out.

BehindTheScenes

user.name wrote: »

There is plenty of people in Ireland that can't honestly pay their mortgage and get evicted. Yet this family is earning a good wage, and still couldn't pay money that many people earning half of much of them can pay. They have been warned, they should be out.

Here here, people like this distort facts and anecdotes around people who need genuine help.