‘Race and employment status’ discrimination in the rental market

According to Councillor Níall McNelis, a number of landlords were deliberately blocking the tenancy applications of people based on race or on employment status, but doing so in a way that made it difficult to prove.

The Labour councillor told the Galway City Tribune that this was forcing people to accept poor-quality but high-cost accommodation – and leaving those in existing tenancies fearing the ramifications if they highlighted any issues.

“A big issue is damp and tenants are afraid to give out because it’s such a precarious situation. I have been talking to families who have children with asthma, being made worse by the damp, but they’re afraid if they open their mouth, they’ll be evicted.

“And it’s worse, I’m afraid, if you’re a person of colour. Tenants are afraid to give out – if they’re a person of colour, or maybe one person in a household is out of work, there’s a fear that an eviction notice will land if a complaint is made,” said the former mayor.

This situation was being exacerbated, said Cllr McNelis, by the fact that there were hundreds of people ‘queuing up’ to take a property when it went on the market.

He said homelessness in the city was likely to worsen in the winter months as notices to quit were being issued ‘left, right and centre’ at the moment, as many landlords were offloading properties.

“The general trend is people in long-term rental properties, who have been there for quite some time, are being served with notices to quit. The problem here is that if a landlord decides to sell their property, the tenant has very few rights,” said the Labour councillor.

“A lot of landlords are looking at the economic situation and getting a small bit jittery about the housing market, so they’re trying to get out ahead of the full economic impact of Covid-19.”

National legislation was required to ensure that long-term tenants were provided with better security of tenure, meaning that they could maintain their tenancy even if a property was sold, said Cllr McNelis.

This increase in the level of evictions, coupled with the return of students in the coming weeks, would put extreme pressure on the private rental sector, he continued.

“My fear is that because we rely so heavily on private rental, this will worsen the situation and lead to more people falling into homelessness.

“When we talk about homelessness, we think of people on the streets, which is a desperately sad situation. But what people are not seeing is those people falling into emergency accommodation or sleeping on friends’ couches without a place to call their own,” said the Labour councillor.

“This is the worst time to be served with a notice to quit because we have the colleges returning, and this year will be worse than last year because the majority of students will be back on campus. We will have three full years’ worth of students who weren’t here last year, entering the rental market for the first time in many cases.”

If issued with a notice to quit, people should immediately seek help, said Cllr McNelis, by approaching Threshold and their local authority to alert them of their situation.

“Up until recently, in the Council, we had an issue where people were presenting with a notice to quit but they couldn’t access help until the eviction actually took place. Thankfully, that problem has been rectified and there is now a member of staff who will log them in advance and begin the work that might avoid someone ending up in emergency accommodation.

“The work being done by COPE and Galway Simon is exceptional and they are dealing with the really hard cases, but we need to be putting in place solutions so that people aren’t ending up at crisis point,” said Cllr McNelis.

“If issued with a notice to quit, people should go to Threshold immediately because what they are finding is a lot of those notices can be improper, and the landlord may not be complying with the legislation that’s there – people need to make sure they ask Threshold before doing anything.”