Tenants in cramped flats made homeless after verbal eviction
DOZENS of tenants have been made homeless after being evicted from nine apartments in Dublin city centre and receiving no written notice.
The tenants, who are mainly young foreign students, were sharing three-bed apartments with up to seven people and one-bed apartments with up to three people on Abbey Street.
A double-bed in one of the apartments was previously advertised as being available to rent to two strangers for €560 each a month on Daft.ie.
The tenants had been paying rent to their landlord, BV Rental Ltd, with an address at 58/59 Middle Abbey Street.
One tenant didn’t receive his deposit back after the landlord claimed damages worth €1,660 was caused to the property.
“We left the apartment in perfect condition,” he claimed.
The tenant was given a copy of an invoice for monies paid to a construction company to repair the alleged damage, and according to the Companies Registration Office, this construction company is also owned by the directors of BV Rental Ltd.
In May, when many of the students were doing college exams, they were told they had to vacate the various apartments as soon as possible.
Chandan Purushotham (27) was sharing a one-bed apartment with three people and had been living there for five months.
“I didn’t receive any form of contract as I was just replacing a friend who had been living there. The rent was collected in cash and we did not receive any written warning about the eviction,” he told the Irish
Independent.
“It was all going smooth until the chaos started last month and we were told we had to move out as something was happening to the building.”
Mr Purushotham had been paying €550 a month to live in a small apartment with two others.
“People from the fire brigade came knocking on our door in the middle of February. They asked us simple questions, like how many people were living here and how much we were paying,” he said.
When he texted the rent collector to say he would remove his belongings once he got his deposit back, the rent collector responded: “No, come pick it up now or it’s going in the bin.”
An advertisement for one of the three-bed apartments was put up on Daft on May 27, but it was removed yesterday.
It said the property was available for €2,800 a month and could be shared by between four and eight people.
Vikrant Penkar had been living in a three-bed apartment with eight people and paid €400 rent in cash each month.
“When we tried to get our deposits back we were given €200 out of €500 and when we refused as it was not all of it, he [the rent collector] left our money on the side of the road and said we could take it or leave it.”
Peter Dooley, a member of Dublin Renters Union, which has been campaigning to stop evictions during the coronavirus pandemic, said it is a “disgrace” tenants could be made homeless like this.
The Irish Independent contacted the landlord numerous times for comment but they did not respond.
A spokesperson for Dublin City Council said no inspections had been carried out, but it is looking into the matter.