Major changes to law on renting promised

Housing charity’s recommendations go to Cabinet

MAJOR changes in the laws around renting accommodation will be brought to Cabinet next week, the Taoiseach has promised.

Amid accusations of ‘ludicrous’ rent increases, Leo Varadkar announced plans to double the ‘notice-to-quit’ period landlords must give tenants, the introduction of a rent register and tough provisions to enforce rent pressure zones, which are supposed to limit annual rent increases in designated areas to 4%.

A rent register would list the amount of rent paid by former tenants on a public database to better inform potential tenants what they should expect to pay.

The notice-to-quit period depends on the length of the tenancy. Those renting for less than six months are entitled to four weeks’ notice while those renting Housing pledge: Leo Varadkar for more than eight years are entitled to 32 weeks. Mr Varadkar said doubling these periods would allow tenants more time to find alternative accommodation.

‘We will do more,’ Mr Varadkar pledged.

‘We will bring in new laws to make the rent pressure zones more enforceable by giving the Residential Tenancies Board the power it needs to enforce them.

‘We will introduce a rent register, as recommended by [housing charity] Threshold, so that people have transparency about the rents that are being paid by others in the same area and know what rents are being charged.

‘That legislation will be at Cabinet on Tuesday and will be published thereafter,’ he said.

The announcement came on the day that Threshold said almost a third of the 73,526 calls it received in 2017 were from renters who had been told their tenancies were coming to an end, up from 14% in 2016.

Its chair Aideen Hayden said the organisation had heard reports of landlords hiking rents by two-thirds and even 100%.

Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin said that Threshold’s annual report made for depressing reading, and illustrated how Government policies and initiatives had failed.

He said Threshold had seen a dramatic rise in the number of calls it received from tenants in danger of losing their homes because their landlords claim they are selling their house or must carry out major refurbishment of their house.

‘Unaffordable rent is a huge issue, as is the sale of rental properties,’ Mr Martin said. It was leading to hidden homeless and many people returning to live with their parents. ‘Across this country it is now commonplace for multiple families to live in a house because of this pattern of evictions.’

Despite the 4% cap in rent pressure zones, rents in Dublin increased by more than 10% last year. ‘As a result,’ he said, ‘tenants are being evicted into homelessness and the sale or refurbishment of the property is being used to circumvent the RPZ.’

‘It is absolutely ludicrous,’ said Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald, citing ‘20% rent increases in areas such as Limerick and Waterford cities’.

Plans for public rent register