A refusal to accept “tenant swapping” by the State’s largest landlord may “effectively force people from their homes”, housing charity Threshold has said.
I-Res, which owns more than 3,500 Irish properties, confirmed by letter to the Oireachtas housing committee that adding new tenants to existing leases is generally not permitted in its stock of homes.
While it says that each instance is reviewed on a case-by-case basis, the letter has drawn criticism from housing charity Threshold and Opposition politicians.
Gareth Redmond, Threshold research and policy officer, said restrictive tenant swapping policies, when combined with new rules allowing for market rent to be reset when a property is vacated, have “the ability to undermine tenants’ security of tenure and effectively force people from their homes”.
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Tenants, he said, can find themselves unable to afford the full rent alone and may have “little realistic choice but to leave their home” if they cannot find someone to share the cost.
Tenant-swapping occurs when one person leaves a property and is replaced on the lease by another.
Social Democrats housing spokesman Rory Hearne said I-Res had refused to come before the Oireachtas housing committee, adding that the company’s tenants are raising issues with him.
He said he was “deeply concerned that I-Res are engaged in forms of constructive evictions forcing tenants from their homes through refusing tenant swaps”.
Hearne called on Minister for Housing James Browne to intervene and on the company to halt the practice.
In a letter to the committee last month, I-Res said it changed its approach to requests to alter the occupation of a dwelling last year after identifying practical and legal issues which it says were leaving tenants without protection.
An I-Res spokesman said its approach “is a general policy rather than one-size-fits-all” and that applications for tenant swaps are “reviewed on a case-by-case basis”.
He said the company changed general policy in May of last year, before the announcement of the new rent regulations.
“The objective of our policy is to ensure that every person residing in our dwellings has a clear and legally-recognised status, rather than a status that is unclear or legally uncertain. We encourage any tenant who has a query or concern to engage directly with us.”
Redmond said if a tenancy ends due to someone leaving after not being able to afford the rent, a landlord will be able to reset the rent to market rates under reforms introduced earlier this year.
Arguing that there may be a need for legislative reform, he said “tenants must have a realistic ability to sustain their tenancies without being effectively forced out by circumstances they cannot reasonably control”.
In its letter to the committee, I-Res argued that when tenants change over time, the nature of the tenancy “can change significantly” and that issues and disputes could arise that the landlord cannot assist with, leading to cases being sent to the Residential Tenancies Board.
It also argued new tenants covered by leases predating rental reforms last year would not be covered by those changes, adding that relationship breakdowns have seen co-tenants get barring orders against each other, and that undeclared occupants have been charged higher rents while named tenants have imposed unfair conditions on subtenants.
