Many tenants unhappy with how landlords deal with anti-social behaviour

Almost one third of housing association tenants are unhappy with how their landlords deal with anti-social behaviour while almost one fifth say their homes are too expensive to heat, a survey published on Thursday finds.

The 2020 Social Housing Tenant Satisfaction survey also finds however a large majority of tenants are happy with the services they get from their landlord. Commissioned by the Irish Council for Social Housing it finds 90 per cent of those asked were “satisfied with the services they receive”.

And among the “services” they identified as most important were good quality housing – named by 93 per cent; efficient repairs service (88 per cent) and estate management (82 per cent).

In all 504 tenants of 16 approved housing bodies took part in 15-minute telephone interviews with independent researchers Spark Marketing, during October.

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Commenting on the findings, ICSH chief executive Donal McManus, said members were “hugely encouraged particularly in the area of tenant engagement and communication”.

A total of 91 per cent of tenants felt they were kept well informed by their landlords of issues impacting them - up from 73 per cent in 2017.

“Critically for 2020, and during what was an extremely challenging year for the sector, 81 per cent of tenants said they were satisfied with services over the course of the Covid-19 pandemic. ICSH members have stepped up in 2020 to ensure tenants feel safe and secure in their affordable homes,” said Mr McManus.

Associations’ handling of anti-social behaviour “is an area in need of improvement”, with a 70 per cent satisfaction level, says the report.

Some respondents suggested reduced levels of satisfaction may be linked to an increased awareness of local disturbances as more people work from home.

Though 19 per cent said they were not happy with the energy efficiencies of their homes the council says this is a “significant improvement” on previous years.

“Tenants in housing associations with older stock gave this question a lower satisfaction rating, highlighting an area for improvement for some AHBs in relation to upgrade works and retrofitting,” said the council..

“Since the first survey in 2017 our sector has increased its social housing stock by over 20 per cent and we have an important climate-mitigation role to play, in terms of innovating with increasingly more energy efficient homes, and rolling-out deep retrofits of our existing stock.

"The survey findings are overwhelmingly positive and testament to the dedication of housing association teams managing almost 40,000 social homes across the length and breadth of Ireland. "