Shameless, brazen and legal

In the midst of Dublin’s housing crisis, our reporter fresh from London, tried to f ind a place to stay in the city. What shocked him most were not the cramped rooms, barely the legal minimum size, or the women willing to share a bed with a stranger for €

WHEN I told my Irish friends I was moving to Dublin from London, every last one of them issued me with stern warnings about how difficult it would be to find a room in the city.

Alas, I paid little heed to their words of caution – as I had previously managed to find somewhere decent in London which, lest we forget, is going through its own housing nightmare – and scarcely thought it could be much worse this side of the Irish Sea.

In London, I’d had viewings cancelled after scheduling them, seen houses with no natural light and only eventually found somewhere to live by taking a house before it was even on the market. But my hunt for a place in Dublin made my London experience look like a walk in the park.

Ignoring the fact that places in the city go within minutes and the sheer pavement-pounding hard work anyone has to put in even to secure a viewing, what really shocked me was how openly some people offered rooms that weren’t fit to live in. On my very first day in Dublin, I saw a single room in a 10-bedroom house near Drumcondra.

It wasn’t the nicest and it felt a bit like a hostel but at least there were a few bathrooms and a small kitchen, which was shared between the 11 or 12 people living in the house.

More concerning to me was the fact that tenants paid cash to the landlord, who, I was told, didn’t take bank transfers. The whole set-up had a whiff of uncertainty.

Bunk beds usually conjure up images of children sharing a room or students travelling, trying to sleep in cheap hostels. Two sets of bunk beds squeezed into a room for four adults to share permanently is somewhat less romantic.

In Smithfield, I visited a small twobedroom flat housing eight tenants There were two sets of bunk-beds in each room; a tiny kitchen; a living room – and just a single bathroom between them. At less than 7.5sq.m of space per person – it was barely more than the legal minimum size to accommodate cattle. And with that many sharing a single bathroom, I shudder to think how quickly a stomach bug would spread.

But that number of people living in one flat breaks no rules. The only violation was the lack of a tumble dryer, which housing law demands if there is no patio or garden at an address.

Eight people pay €350 each, or €2,800 in total, to an ‘administrator’ who passes the cash onto the landlord. These middlemen rent out the dwellings to the tenants who often find themselves trying to cover the monthly cost by advertising any empty bed. Since they are the ones who will have to share the room with the new arrival, they want to have a say in who that is. But it’s the landlords or middle-men who are responsible for – and exploiting – a desperate situation.

Tenants have no formal contract and no contact with whoever actually owns the apartment. I didn’t know whether to laugh or apologise to the people for

‘Four grown men crammed into one room’

their appalling situation.

Almost as bad was the short-term room in Cabra I found advertised on Facebook. A bunk in a room sharing with three other men was on offer for €220 a month. The men in the room had a bathroom to themselves and a fridge in the room but still had to share the kitchen with the whole 20-person house.

None of the four had signed a contract and they transfer money directly to the landlord, who also controls the electricity top-ups in the house. So somebody is making €880 a month by cramming four grown men into a room that shouldn’t fit much more than a double bed. There was little space for personal belongings and no privacy – you wouldn’t be able to sneeze without three other men hearing you. But they probably have more privacy than the unfortunate woman in Smithfield, who, for the princely sum of €500, gets to share a double bed with a stranger – and, yes, there was some interest shown.

I thought London’s housing crisis was bad. But rules on multiple occupancy homes there have made it much harder for landlords to cram so many people into so little space.

A whole flat that looks very similar in the same building is currently listed on rental sites for €1,750. Assuming the market price is similar, that means somebody is making almost €12,000 extra a year by exploiting desperate people.

What shocked me the most, though, was just how open all this advertising was. There was no sense that anyone was trying to hide the renting of such substandard accommodation.

Having said that, I did speak to renters who told me it was far from the worst experience they’d had, and they found there was always an upside in sharing with people you like and get on with.

However, securing accommodation in Dublin makes getting a place in London look like child’s play.

This is not the fault of the people who live in these sub-standard rooms, even when it is they that advertise.

It’s the fault primarily of the landlords and middle-men who put four beds in a small room in the first place – and also of the laws that make unliveable conditions the only option for people moving to Dublin without much money.

Women were offered a shared bed for €500