Greg DalyAnti-homelessness campaigners welcome plans for rent control
Anti-homelessness campaigners have welcomed Government plans to introduce rent controls in the Irish private rental market.
Following approval from Attorney General Maire Whelan, Environment Minister Alan Kelly is expected to seek cabinet approval for temporary rent controls, billed as “rent certainty”, within weeks. The move aims to help thousands of families who have been hit by repeated rent increases.
Francis Doherty, Communications and Advocacy Manager of the Peter McVerry Trust, told The Irish Catholic that the trust welcomed the move “because we’ve been calling for such measures for the last twelve months”.
“We do need this measure even if it’s temporary because we need some stability in the market to allow us to reduce the number coming into homelessness from the private rented sector, and to allow us to move people currently homeless into the private rental market,” he said.
Focus Ireland’s Roughan McNamara agreed that the move is important, but stressed that it is “only one part of a range of measures needed to tackle the crisis in the housing market”.
“The details of the minister’s plans haven’t been revealed yet”, he admitted to The Irish Catholic, stressing that “any system needs to work for tenants and landlords alike”.
Requirement
One requirement would be “some kind of tax divided to landlords who would rent to social tenants”, he said, explaining that landlords “need to be able to cover their costs in order to ensure there isn’t a further reduction into rental stocks available”.
The third part of the equation, he added, lies outside Minister Kelly’s remit, but relates to how rent supplements need to be raised. Explaining that April saw a record 71 families becoming homeless in Dublin, Mr McNamara said “an awful lot of families and single people depend on rent supplements which have lagged far behind costs, and growing numbers are becoming homeless because rent supplements don’t cover those costs”.
“Such people often find themselves having to top up rent payments with welfare payments, forcing them to choose between food and having a roof over their head,” he continued, describing the position of such people as “unsustainable”.