Homeowner struggling to get back home given rent-free to refugees

Brendan Burgess

Brendan Burgess

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No good deed goes unpunished!

www.irishtimes.com

Malahide homeowner seeking return of house offered to State for refugees

Willie Guerin donated house for two years in 2021 and is now struggling to get it back, while a family of eight is facing homelessness
www.irishtimes.com www.irishtimes.com

Hard to follow the story, but this is what I think happened

1) August 2021 Irish government brought an Afghan refugee family to Dublin after the Taliban takeover
2) The owner offered the house rent-free for two years to the Irish Refugee Council
3) Sept 2021 - the family moved from Mosney to the house
4) Malahide Community Group drew up a lease for two years at €3,000 a month. This was required so that the family could get HAP. They needed to get HAP so that they could get onto Fingal's Housing List.
5) The owner didn't want to sign lease and didn't want any money - but did sign the lease and never took the money.
6) The owner has refused to sign the HAP forms
7) Now the family has tenancy rights
8) They did not leave as agreed after the two years
9) The owner has issued notice to quit but has no idea whether the family will quit or not
 
I read it as well, the reporting was confusing. The Malahide Community Group seem to have been given the short end of the straw as they have been given the responsibility but no power. Fingal cc come across as inflexible. The poor home owner is very sympathetic to the family but the two years are up and the family need to leave. They are now over holding significantly. The whole lease, HAP thing is nothing to do with the landlord.

As you say no good dead….
 
The issue is that all tenancies legally become indefinite in Ireland after six months, no matter what the landlord or tenants intend at the start of the contract or what they write in it.

This makes good sense as tenants build their lives around where they live and they shouldn’t be removable at whim.

But I think landlords and renters should (in rare circumstances like these) be allowed to enter into contracts of a defined duration that are enforceable at the RTB.
 
Infuriating to read. Wouldn't the refugees have a tax liability?. Obviously not because they get everything for free, but if I gave a friend a free house to stay in then wouldn't they have a liability?.
 
Dr Strangelove said:
The issue is that all tenancies legally become indefinite in Ireland after six months, no matter what the landlord or tenants intend at the start of the contract or what they write in it.

This makes good sense as tenants build their lives around where they live and they shouldn’t be removable at whim.
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I've been a tenant, a homeowner and a landlord all at the same time and in my opinion the party which has the least respect for the law and lacks personal ethic has all the power. There are enforcement levers in place for landlords who flout the law, although the institutional incompetence of the State does limit them, but there is almost nothing in place to protect landlords.

The specific case highlighted in this thread has nothing to do with the nationality of the tenants and everything to do with a society and legal framework which thinks nobody should ever get evicted.
 
I'm sure an certain that there will not be one "Public Representative" or a " Journalist " will have the guts to speak up against this nonsense. You surely would not expect the left leaning parties and all so called homeless charities to high light this outrageous carry on
 
Purple said:
All political parties in this country are left leaning or well to the left. This sort of thing is a consequence of that.
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Completely agree, in the past the majority of parties would have been center right but have drifted to the left.

Hopefully we will return to the centre right.
 
Dermot said:
I'm sure an certain that there will not be one "Public Representative" or a " Journalist " will have the guts to speak up against this nonsense. You surely would not expect the left leaning parties and all so called homeless charities to high light this outrageous carry on
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Sadly some parties follow an ideology rather than possess any level of common sense and actually listen to the people.
 
The Horseman said:
Completely agree, in the past the majority of parties would have been center right but have drifted to the left.

Hopefully we will return to the centre right.
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FF were centre left/populist. The PD's were centre right on economic issues, FG were kind of centre right but populist as well. Labour are the party that they always were; well educated middle class socialists who resent anyone who earns more then them, especially if they aren't as well educated.
 
Marsupial said:
Ironically, the luckless property owner is a constituent of the Minister who is responsible for this kind of utter nonsense. (I somehow doubt that Darragh will be getting many votes from the luckless Guerin household.)
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It was actually Simon Coveney as housing minister that brought in all these measures that restrict evictions and the rent pressure zones ,that's when the exodus by landlords really accelerated and has led to the housing crisis we have now, he was a very incomempetent housing minister as was eoghan Murphy
 
joe sod said:
It was actually Simon Coveney as housing minister that brought in all these measures that restrict evictions and the rent pressure zones ,that's when the exodus by landlords really accelerated and has led to the housing crisis we have now, he was a very incomempetent housing minister as was eoghan Murphy
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It was all driven by fear of the Shinners. I thought that putting some clear space between them on key policy issues would have been a better option but with the emotive catastrophising of our housing problems by the media it's hard to remain logical and rational so policies like rent caps and eviction bans which have been shown over and over again to make these issues worse are put in place and are supported by a well meaning but economically illiterate public.
 
Purple said:
It was all driven by fear of the Shinners. I thought that putting some clear space between them on key policy issues would have been a better option but with the emotive catastrophising of our housing problems by the media it's hard to remain logical and rational so policies like rent caps and eviction bans which have been shown over and over again to make these issues worse are put in place and are supported by a well meaning but economically illiterate public.
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Brian Lenihan is the ultimate architect. Sick and dying in 2009, as Finance Minster he capitulated to pressure from his constituency colleague Joan Burton to weaponise the tax system against landlords.

Burton herself was under pressure from the Shinners and the Joe Higgins/Coppinger loony left also in the same constituency.

Smelling blood, the Shinners and their fellow travellers went for broke, and got a raft of other legislation enacted hammering not only landlords but housebuilders and property developers.

Within 2 years it was obvious to anyone with eyes that there was a serious housing shortage in Dublin.

The political class doubled down and soon had a full-blown crisis on their hands.

8 or 9 years further on, they've as yet failed both to confront the scale of the disaster they created, and to learn the obvious lessons from it.

The public have yet to punish them for all this, but sooner or later there will be a backlash, and probably an ugly one. Don't say you weren't warned.
 
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Not sure if any party will solve it in one term. Maybe Ireland will go back towards the right and realise there isn't one for "everybody in the audience".
 
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