Irish Times: "Is the RTB fit for purpose?"

NoRegretsCoyote said:
Where can I find this? When I went looking on the RTB website (albeit years ago) it was vague, and I suspect deliberately so.
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The best resource I've found is Landlord and Tenant Law - The Residential Sector by Una Cassidy and Jennifer Ring, 2nd Edition, Round Hall Publishing. It has a ten page section (pp123-132) on "damage beyond normal wear and tear" alone with dozens of cases quoted and sets out the principles generally followed in RTB cases. It's not cheap (about €180) but it's a great reference book and an excellent investment for any landlord.

In practice, most tenants don't observe the formalities of giving notice, but unless the landlord objects (as a tenant might object to an invalid notice of termination) then it's generally deemed to be a practical termination of the tenancy by mutual agreement. Arguably this is a bit inconsistent.

That again is a fair point. However being a landlord is like running a business with a five figure turnover and this brings certain responsibilities. Yes, the compliance burden is excessive, but that's on the legislature.
 
Horatio said:
Why is that? I've seen similar sentiment towards St Vincent De Paul either here or on another forum but didn't see a reason why.

Sincere question.
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Focus Ireland is a political advocacy group and has long abandoned it's role of housing homeless people. It now Focuses on trying to make housing provision public. I work with people who know McVerry well and I have a family member who was involved as a client. I formed my opinion because of those factors.
 
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McVerry has consistently been an advocate of higher taxes. There doesn't seem to be any problem that he thinks can't be solved by heaping yet more taxes on the working Irish population.
Of course it's a free world and he's perfectly entitled to advocate for this. What is really problem is that the State funds him to advocate for a bigger and more expansive State. It's a bit like, say, RTE were paying fees to an organisation to better enable them to extract higher payments for their clients from RTE itself. Oh, wait.....
 
Have to say I don't think the RTB is fit for purpose too under resourced and cryptic. But in the cases I had experience of, the landlord won the case.
 
Horatio said:
Why is that? I've seen similar sentiment towards St Vincent De Paul either here or on another forum but didn't see a reason why.

Sincere question.
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From my point of view, I see what PMV Trust actually do, as opposed to what they say they intend. They intend to get people off the streets, housing first is the key, get people a roof over the heads, and stability will (might) follow.

What actually happens is that they put severely mentally unwell people into apartments in the RPZ areas without sufficient intervention and support. So what happens is that someone with mental health issues, including subsequent addiction issues is put into an apartment alone, unsupervised.

I've had to deal with it in 4 apartments that I oversee and manage, it's the same thing now on repeat. There's mayhem late at night, weirdos coming at all hours, lost fobs meaning they kick their doors in, they threaten and attack neighbours and destroy their homes through a lack of mental capacity.

The lack of support and oversight is their issue, you can't just leave these people alone, they're not well and able to look after themselves. It's totally unfair on everyone else living around them. I refuse to entertain them now, it's not fair on the neighbours.
 

This is the reality of the government's Care in the Community policy at work. Nothing will change until current thinking changes. See it my self and have family members who work in the area.
 
Towger said:
This is the reality of the government's Care in the Community policy at work. Nothing will change until current thinking changes. See it my self and have family members who work in the area.
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Yeah, the issue here is that there's totally insufficient support. It's been trialed successfully in other nations, but the success stories include a social worker on hand almost daily, whereas with the PMV trust they're lucky if they get seen once in a couple of months.

Also, another issue is staff and incidents. If a staff member is assaulted, the staff member is moved to another workplace. I think that assault of staff should be the end of the line for a tenant. You assault someone, then you're out of the program. Move to the next person who likely won't engage in that kind of carry on. We've a culture of tolerating violence here and I strongly disagree with it.
 
Didn't they send in a social worker, not once but twice, to one of their tenancies, where someone had died in the flat, and managed to not notice?
 
The reality is may are not violent, but should be in an assisted living arrangement rather than placed by themselves in an apartment, with nothing to keep them occupied. Another issue is the health care workers are based on electrical area, every time the government redraw the lines the staff are all moved around.
 
That’s a broader issue in that since the old style mental institutions were closed down, a lot of people ended up homeless, not defending McVerry but it’s a deeper problem
 
galway_blow_in said:
That’s a broader issue in that since the old style mental institutions were closed down, a lot of people ended up homeless, not defending McVerry but it’s a deeper problem
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I agree with you, we need more asylums. I can tell you there's a large amount of people on their own who are not fit to look after themselves. It's immoral in its own right.
 
vincentgav said:
I agree with you, we need more asylums. I can tell you there's a large amount of people on their own who are not fit to look after themselves. It's immoral in its own right.
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The words "sheltered housing" has disappeared from the vocabulary, but honestly there's quite a lot of people who really need something along that model.
 
Well here's the first lie:

1. One of the aims of the Act under which the RTB was established is for disputes between landlords and tenants to be resolved “cheaply and speedily”.

Nothing, absolutely zero speedy about the RTB. And all landlords know that it's a complete waste of time. We also know the only ones paying for this excuse of a quasi judicial body is us landlords. The system is actually designed to delay us. The RTB throw out cases if you have a sentence wrong in the notice. So you have to start from scratch again, this could be one year down the line. And they are constantly changing what notices are. The 'judge' is a law onto themselves, they can make up their own minds depending on how they feel about you. I had 3 cases, and was involved in a fourth. My 3 cases, two were against me, and one for me. And all were on the point of whether my notice was valid or not. Exactly the same documents.

If you win, the RTB WILL NOT pay for you to go to court. And many don't even know that the 'decision' of the RTB is worthless. Their Determination Orders have no legal weight. To enforce them you have to go to actual court. But the RTB will not pay. BUT they will pay for the tenants to go to court against you.
 
Brendan Burgess said:
But the article seems to imply that its main purpose is to protect tenants from ever being evicted and as some tenants are being evicted, it's not fit for purpose.
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It's the standard anti landlord article. And that's not why the RTB was set up. It was to take matters out of the courts. Now it's an extra 'court' that takes months or years.
 
Not only that, the County Councils and corporations are telling the tenant that they will not accept a valid notice from a landlord unless Threshold etc state that it is valid. Even though it has zero to do with Threshold. And Threshold do not have legal standing to make such declaations.

And yes I have it in writing from my tenant, plus the corporation that they will only accept validity if signed for by Threshold.

This is because the state wants to abdicate responsibility for housing down the line.
 
For one of my hearings with the RTB, their own expert could not read the documents the RTB had sent them. So I had to supply them at the online meeting. If I'd have been on say my mobile I'd have been scupered.

This was despite an ardeous procedure whereby I had to send in an application form and copies of all documents. Which some minion in the RTB scans into their system as far as I could work out. With no quality control. I know that as I was involved in more than one case, so basically the person scanning could not care less. And yes AAM I can also prove this as the RTB sends me back a copy of all my documents just before the 'hearing'. Atrocious is putting it mildly. I did wonder why on earth my beautifully filled out forms and scans ended up this way but he ho that's the RTB.

And if you get a thing wrong with the application form they are only too delighted to send it back to you to delay things.

In one case I couldn't attend the hearing as I was going on holiday, far away, and I had not at all realised that I must give them exactly when I would or would not be available. I thought they'd phone me up and say are you available next x date. The holiday was booked after I'd sent in the forms.

Even medical appointments were an issue.

And they love to give me short deadlines. Which they then use against you. But they have no deadlines.

And landlords you're going to love this. It's all in secret. So no landlord can prove what goes on. So much for public justice. Well don't say I didn't warn you. I was given out to because the adjudicator went to talk to the RTB about the tenant, who wasn't attending, and I popped to the bathroom. That's a big no no. They were VERY insistent you could not record. Now I'll let the readers come to their own conclusions on that.

Two Adjudicators were lovely, completely professional and held the case fairly and correctly. They are not RTB staff.
 
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Another lie:

A spokesman for the RTB said its dispute resolution service was “a vital service” and the RTB had “many of the powers that the courts have” but the way in which disputes were resolved was “less formal than a court”.

I started off with one adjudicator who was flustered as she was clearly late. I was well on time but stressed about technical stuff as I was new to online meetings at that time. So as she was late I phoned RTB to see if I was making a mistake with my connection. Which I wasn't. Adjudicator who was clearly late (just out of bed) tried to blame it on the technology and didn't like it when I pointed out there had been no issue with the connection. We started off on first name terms, she never told me it was supposed to be informal, (the others did) and she got thick with me when I said I went to the bathroom while she was chasing the RTB for the tenant who didn't show up. I'd no clue I wasn't supposed to leave the room. She asked me to present my case and I said as it says in my application I'm doing this to get confirmation that my notice is valid. She didn't like that and told me I had to call her Ms. Adjudicator from then on and I told her to call me Ms. Surname. So she called me Bronte and I had to call her Ms. Adjudicator.

I knew straight away she'd rule against me because she said as much. And she had not read my file at all. It was an easy few bob for her is my take on it. (and yes I did complain. LOL., like that's gonna work)
 
RTB - complete and utter waste of space. More forms to fill in , cash to pay and to be honest another good reason why people are getting out of the letting market. Can’t trust the RTB, just completely incompetent & biased against landlords.
 
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