Housing charity, Threshold, is calling on the Government to provide licensees with similar rights to tenants in their recent report, ‘Renting at the Frontier’.
Threshold is an organisation which provides advise to renters experiencing housing problems in order to prevent homelessness and ensure people have safe and secure housing.
The report, funded by the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, discusses how licensees have barely any rights in the eyes of the law and can be evicted on a moment’s notice, treated unfairly or live in poor conditions, with many not even knowing that they are licensees until a problem occurs.
The term ‘licensees’ refer to those who are not protected by tenancy law, such as those renting a room in someone’s private residence and sharing living facilities, or those living in garden sheds and converted garages, and are often students, migrants, low-income workers and elderly people.
According to Threshold, due to the ongoing housing crisis in Ireland, many people cannot afford proper rental homes and because of this people will accept anything they can find, even if the arrangement gives them almost no rights.
Gareth Redmond, research and policy officer at Threshold states that:
“The entire purpose of the report was to really learn more about licensee experiences, document the different types of license agreements and ultimately provide policy recommendations of how to provide better security for licenses.”
“We have estimated about 50,000 licensees in Ireland, and these people need some degree of protection.”
Threshold says that the main problem they are seeing with licensees are the power imbalances and bad behaviour from the landlords; this can be landlords making up rules, being controlling towards people’s movements, entering someone’s private space without permission, changing locks and threatening behaviour, such as refusing to return deposits or evicting them with no warning.
One of the biggest changes Threshold is advocating for is a change to the Rent-a-Room scheme.
This scheme allows homeowners to earn up to €14,000 per year, tax free, by renting out a room in their home, and they don’t need to register with the Residential Tenancies Board (RTB) or have a tenancy agreement and can simply have their own rules.
The scheme was initially introduced to encourage homeowners to rent spare rooms, especially to students in order to increase the supply of accommodation, and they did not want to place regulations on people’s homes, but this has now left these renters extremely vulnerable.
Whilst Threshold would like to see this scheme reformed, they are conscious that it would be difficult for the government to implement rules in someone’s own home; it may lead to less incentive to rent out rooms, but they hope that this simply eliminates those who are abusing the scheme.
Gareth says:
“This is ultimately about recognising that in the case of the rental room, this is the person’s home, it is their sanctuary, but they’re also providing a service.”
“It is difficult to regulate them [people] out of their private property rights.”
Source: Threshold Report ‘Renting at the Frontier’.
Threshold’s report highlights how these licensee arrangements need urgent attention from the Government in order to prevent people any more people from being unfairly evicted and living in poor conditions and work towards providing licensees with security in their accommodations.