Sinn Féin have urged the Government to tackle a crisis in the private rental sector with more and more renters now being served with eviction notices during the current housing crisis.
Sinn Féin’s housing spokesperson Eoin Ó Broin has been issued figures, released by the Residential Tenancies Board, showing 1,781 tenants served with eviction notices between April and June of this year – in excess of double the amount of 841 in the same timeframe last year.
The information from the RTB prompted the board to highlight how high property prices are seeing many landlords exit the market to sell their properties, with dwindling rental properties in an already depressed market.
The Sinn Féin TD said the latest RTB eviction notice figures must be a “wake-up call and inaction is no longer acceptable”.
Mr Ó Broin said that all actions, including a temporary eviction ban into homelessness, reform of tax in the sector and the increased use of vacant properties must be considered.
Deputy Ó Broin wrote in The Irish Examiner today that “a chronic undersupply of social housing coupled with the growing of single property private landlords exiting the market is driving the homelessness crisis”.
There’s also “growing resentment” amongst single property landlords at “sweetheart tax deals gifted to build-to-rent institutional investors who pay no tax on their rent roll or capital gains” according to Deputy Ó Broin.
“With rents at record levels, there is no doubt that the majority of landlords are making a very significant profit on their investments. However, if single property landlords continue to exit the market while Government fails to provide an adequate supply of social housing, then homelessness will continue to rise.
The latest homelessness figures show 10,492 people without homes in the country – just shy of the peak of the homelessness crisis in 2019 when 10,514 were declared homeless.
