Housing and homeless charities have warned the Government’s decision to end a temporary ban on evictions from the rental market may lead to a huge surge in the numbers of people and children becoming homeless in the coming months.
Mike Allen, director of advocacy at homeless charity Focus Ireland, said there were major shortages of emergency accommodation across the country.
“The Government has essentially decided to live with a level of street homelessness which has never been considered tolerable before. This may well involve children as well as adults,” he said.
Mr Allen said in the face of growing numbers forced to sleep rough, the Government would come under “increasing pressure” in the coming months to reinstate a stay on evictions.
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The end of the current ban could lead to a new “wave” of evictions by landlords who had been unsettled by the “stop-start approach” from the Coalition on the issue, he said.
The ban on evictions is due to expire on a phased basis from the end of March, following a decision at Cabinet on Tuesday.
Some renters will still be protected into June but so-called “no fault” evictions will be allowed to start again for others over April and May depending on the length of the tenancies.
Current Department of Housing figures show there were more than 11,700 people homeless last month, including 3,431 children.
John-Mark McCafferty, chief executive of tenants’ rights charity Threshold, said the decision to lift the ban would likely “make a bad situation worse” in the rental market.
The organisation was working with “thousands of people who are facing losing their homes and they don’t know where to turn”, he said.
While the moratorium on evictions was not a “silver bullet”, unprecedented numbers of adults and children were now at risk of becoming homeless, he said.
“Evidence from the Residential Tenancies Board and our frontline staff indicates a significant number of evictions are pending,” he said.
The policy had been intended to provide “breathing space”, but Mr McCafferty said action from Government to improve housing supply in the interim had been lacking.
In a statement, the Irish Property Owners Association (IPOA) said the end of the ban was a “crucial” move needed to “stem the exodus” of landlords from the rental market.
The landlord lobby group said the ban was an “inadequate” response and that the IPOA had raised “serious reservations” over the constitutionality of the policy.
“We look forward to seeing a meaningful package of incentives from Government to incentivise property owners to stay in the market,” the statement said.
