Employers turn to Threshold to help staff in rental crisis

Housing charity Threshold has seen an increase in queries from companies trying to help junior and foreign staff find and stay in rented accommodation.

The charity said that its staff have been “flat out” dealing with new complaints and queries as the housing crisis worsens and rents hit record highs.

Some 2,900 people contacted Threshold in May and June, including – for the first time – significant numbers of businesses trying to help low-income, junior and foreign staff find or hold on to rental properties.

Threshold chief executive John-Mark McCafferty said these contacts from companies were “a relatively recent phenomenon” as more employers try to help out younger and foreign staff locate or retain affordable homes.

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Four years ago low-income families made up the bulk of the complaints and queries to Threshold, but different types of tenants, including more and more in steady employment, have been swept up by the deepening crisis.

“You are seeing a broader swathe of people, mostly younger and many from overseas, who are really struggling to find places to stay,” said Mr McCafferty.

“We have a broad sweep of people we are trying to assist. Our main focus is low-income tenants, but the housing crisis is affecting all sorts of housing and family types, and all nationalities and not only the lowest-income renters.”

Young workforce

The business community reported similar problems for staff.

Fergal O’Brien, director of policy and public affairs at employers’ group Ibec, said that the housing crisis for companies and their staff was becoming “very acute in Dublin but also an issue in other cities as well” as the country struggles with the fallout from a decade-long shortfall in investment.

"We really see it where companies have a particularly young workforce or expanding workforce or where they are trying to push new projects into Ireland or in a start-up phase," he said.

Mr O’Brien noted that foreign investment into the country was creating about 2,000 new jobs every quarter in Dublin, while a report this week showed there were just 1,100 properties to rent in the city.

“That influx of new talent into the city is really struggling to get suitable accommodation,” he said.

The latest rental report from property website Daft.ie published this week showed that rents reached a record high in the first six months of the year and that supply had fallen to an all-time low. The average monthly rent across the country in the second quarter of this year was up 12 per cent to €1,159, while in Dublin rents were up €260 a month since their previous peak in 2008.

Daft said that 18,000 new dwellings were needed every year, including 6,000 social housing units.

Mr McCafferty described the crisis as “the perfect storm” as the availability of rented accommodation fell to a record low.

“I have been working in housing to some extent for the last 15 years and I have never seen a housing market so acute as this one,” he said.

“I have never seen rent levels as high as they are and never seen so many families in homelessness and emergency accommodation. It is the perfect storm with students coming into the market.

“We haven’t built anything for the last 10 years and we built very little social housing over the previous 30 years. That is fine if you have high-quality affordable tenure-secure accommodation, but it is not the case with regard to many houses and apartments in the private rental sector.”

Complaints and queries

In May and June Threshold received 926 complaints, queries and requests for advice relating to termination of tenancies, 479 on rent increases, 350 from mostly low-and middle-income earners seeking accommodation and 242 from people whose landlords had held on to their deposits.

A further 207 complaints or queries were received relating to repairs to rented accommodation.

Threshold was unable to provide comparative figures for the previous two-month period as it has changed its database on the statistics showing the nature of queries from “new clients”.

The charity has called for the Government to compel the Residential Tenancies Board, the regulatory body covering landlords, to create a mandatory rent register that would help prevent landlords from raising rents above the 4 per cent statutory limit in so-called rent pressure zones.

Landlords found by the board to have charged tenants in excess of the limit can be required to pay damages of up to €20,000 and refund any rent paid by tenants over that limit.

Some tenants have complained that they only discovered their landlords had increased rents above the 4 per cent limit after they have moved out and the properties were put up for rent again.