Greedy vulture funds were planning to evict fully paid-up tenants from their homes before the ban on such a move was extended last night.
And one man, with a young family, gave Dublin Live a message for new Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien.
He said he feels he is “just a number and not a person” when it comes to dealing with his landlords and appealed to the minister to think of the children caught up in evictions.
Stephen also wondered if Mr O’Brien really wants to fix the problem.
He added he has not missed a rent payment in 11 years, he and his wife both work, his children attend local schools and he had been fearing a “no-fault eviction”.
However, last night his concerns were unlikely to be fully eased when the ban on evictions was extended until the end of the month.
In his message to Mr O’Brien, Stephen said: “This housing situation is getting worse, it’s affecting more and more people, putting regular working people under additional stress and it’s going to affect our children even more.
“I know you will say you want to fix the problems but the question we have to ask is – what sort of society do we want to live in, do we really impose a precariat society on our children, so even if they do everything right they are still going to be screwed.
“Basically do you really want to fix this?”
Residents at St Helen’s Court in Dun Laoghaire received emails on Friday from their landlords asking them: “What time would suit you for final inspection on Monday?”
This was another way of saying they were being evicted and the landlords wanted them out as soon as was legally possible, until last night’s intervention by the minister. However, the tenants still fear the new moratorium will only see the can kicked down the road for a few more weeks.
Stephen and his partner have two children aged 12 and seven.
He said: “It’s as if you’re just a number, not a person, it’s like a bad joke.
“I am trying to do my best to get out of here and I understand the landlord’s position, but it is getting really, really distressing.”
People Before Profit TD Richard Boyd Barrett is campaigning to keep the residents in their homes.
Before last night’s extension, he said the delay had “left the door wide open to scurrilous landlords to move to evict”.
He added: “If there are any longer-term legal problems with extending the ban, all the more reason the Government should move quickly to hold a referendum to enshrine the Right to Housing in the constitution.”
Dublin Live's efforts to contact the landlords yesterday were unsuccessful.
Meanwhile, it was also announced last night the special Covid cap on rent increases is being lifted from August 1.
Mr O’Brien made the move after an incorporeal Cabinet meeting, over the phone, because Taoiseach Micheal Martin is in Brussels.
The Government has officially taken the shackles off landlords whose properties aren’t in Rent Pressure Zones, but who were barred from imposing any rent increases during the pandemic.
The minister said: “The rent freeze and eviction moratorium were brought in under emergency legislation targeting all tenancies regardless of individual tenants’ circumstances.
“It is well known that they could not be extended indefinitely.”
