Greg Daly
The attempted eviction of over a hundred families from a west Dublin estate is “a timely reminder” of what is at stake if the housing crisis goes untackled, a leading campaigner has said.
“This is what we’ve been saying, that we’ve been warning for two years,” Focus Ireland’s Mike Allen told The Irish Catholic, continuing, “Cases are coming up more and more, but what’s different about this one is the number of them coming at one time.”
Mr Allen’s comments came after 103 families in Tyrrelstown’s Cruise Park received letters directing them to leave their rented homes within the next two to six months, a Goldman Sachs ‘vulture fund’ having purchased an €89m Ulster Bank loan to the estate’s developers. The loan had been secured against the properties, which the fund intends to sell.
With there being more than 30,000 buy-to-let mortgages over a year in arrears, and over 40,000 mortgages around Ireland having been taken over by other ‘vulture funds’, Mr Allen says if the Government doesn’t take action there will be more mass evictions.
One possible solution, he said, would involve linking tenancies to properties, so banks and others could profit from renting while addressing people’s need for secure homes. “Legislation to change the grounds of tenancy is so straightforward that the Dáil could do it the next time it sits,” he argued. “If it sits next week for a single day, they could do it there and then.”