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Eviction ban: time to put our house in order

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ere are certain nouns that can be used as accusations, like thief, liar or cheat, that tow negative judgements in their wake for good reason. Moral codes are involved and have been broken. Landlord has been among those words in Ireland for emotive historical reasons. But there is no reason for the dark sentiment surrounding them today.

We need landlords and we need a new word for them. ese days they are neither lords nor are they landed, with the majority of those who own property and rent it out being people just like the rest of us, and they rent out for a variety of reasons. Among them are people who want a retirement nest egg, a ga for when their children become students, because they have inherited a place or those who were encouraged into the market by tax breaks given for build-torent schemes in the past. e majority are private smalltimers.

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And they are not to blame for of the housing crisis. Demonising landlords — okay, let’s call them providers, hosts or letters; anything but landlords — and driving them out of the market only exacerbates the situation where there is a critical shortage of property to rent. At a time when Ireland is falling into line with the rest of Europe, where 30% rent rather than own homes and where the population has grown by 8% between the 2022 census and the previous one in 2016, we need more, not fewer, homes to rent. With the lifting of the eviction ban and as providers will begin to follow through on stalled plans to sell up from the start of April, the cry has gone up from the Opposition about renters who will lose the roof over their heads and will have “nowhere to go”. e policy on the rental market doesn’t make sense and isn’t working. ere are options out there for renters, including rst option to buy, the tenant-in-situ scheme and certainly these should have been properly prepared over the winter months

But how can they nd somewhere else to rent when providers have been driven out of the market by Government policy, opprobrium and — let’s mention the elephant in the room — the fear that worse is to come if there is a change of Government?

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