Kathy Foley

July 27th, 2008

As soon as I met him I should have stuttered some excuse and hightailed it down the North Circular Road. But I didn’t. Desperation can drive a girl to do stupid things.

I’d been trying to find somewhere to live for weeks. I had scoured the classified ads, asked everyone I knew and paid IR£50 to an agency that promised to call me, but never did. That’s how I ended up outside a run-down, five-storey house, meeting a landlord about a bedsit. He was mean-faced, abrupt and had a vaguely predatory air. My instinct was to flee, but I needed somewhere to live. I followed him up four flights of stairs to the bedsit, gulping slightly when he locked the door behind us.

It was tiny – the size of a box room – and contained a single bed, a small table and chair, a decrepit old armchair and a badly-stained sink, which protruded over the end of the bed. The carpet was threadbare and filthy. The curtains were tatty and filthy. Everything was filthy. I stood very still, tried not to touch anything and swallowed hard.

“Well, whatcha think?” he leered at me. What I thought was that the odds of me becoming a headline in the Evening Herald had just shortened dramatically. I was young and bursting with hopes, dreams and ambitions, none of which included becoming ‘WOMAN, 21, STRANGLED IN BEDSIT’.

Fortunately, when I told Scrooge’s more unpleasant twin that I had a few other places to check out, he unlocked the door and stood aside. I scuttled out, fled down the stairs and hurried off. Once out of sight, I sat down heavily on a step and tried very hard not to cry.

Soon, I was lucky enough to move into a new apartment with friends. In the intervening decade, I’ve either been an owner-occupier or a tenant in pleasant accommodation with sympathetic, fair-minded landlords. Had I given it any consideration, I would have assumed the dramatic increase in new housing stock had put paid to bedsit culture.

I was wrong. Bedsits still abound. Perusal of a recent Evening Herald turned up a few classified ads for bedsits that seemed straight from the 1950s. One was in Ranelagh (“suit 1 gent”), another in Drumcondra (“suit 1 working man”) and another in Harold’s Cross (“suit 1 working gent”). According to Threshold, the not-for-profit organisation that advises on housing issues, there are still over 5,000 bedsits in Dublin and 3,000 more nationally. Not all of them are dingy hellholes, I’m sure, but I imagine a fair proportion look like the fleapit I saw 10 years ago.

There are even less salubrious digs available, if you care to look. One recent online listing featured accommodation that effectively consisted of a mattress in the space under a staircase.

At this end of the housing market, tenants often have poor literacy skills, poor English language skills or chronic health problems. According to Threshold, 35 per cent of those renting in the private rented sector have incomes below the poverty line and 21 per cent live in consistent poverty. As long as there are vulnerable tenants, there will be unscrupulous landlords willing to take advantage of them. In 2006, 30 per cent of the 6,800 rental properties inspected fell below minimum standards.

And those standards were not particularly rigorous. An open fireplace could be the only source of heating, for example. A constant supply of hot water was not a requirement, neither was a fridge, a cooker or a private bathroom. Not before time, the government has stepped in with a new set of regulations, designed to eliminate “Dickensian” conditions, as Michael Finneran, the minister of state for housing, has described them.

Under the proposed new regulations, which are currently open for public consultation, each unit of rental accommodation will have to have a self-contained bathroom, appliances, better heating and ventilation and adequate natural lighting. The days of the bedsit, it would seem, are numbered.

While this is marvellous news, regulations don’t mean much unless enforced. Of the 2,000-odd cases in 2006 in which properties fell below the old minimum standards, legal action was initiated in only 11 cases. A more heavy-handed approach will be needed if the new regulations are to be widely adopted.

And more reform is needed. Many landlords, for example, stipulate they will not accept tenants in receipt of rent allowance. It’s sneaky discrimination that can be justified on the grounds that the rent supplement is paid in arrears. Threshold would like to see that changed, but given this would involve a once-off cost to the exchequer of €30m to € 40m, it’s unlikely to happen soon.

The biggest cause of disputes in the rental sector is retention of deposits by landlords. Threshold has proposed the establishment of an independent rental deposits board to which tenants would lodge deposits rather than giving the money to landlords. Such a body would be self-financing from the interest accrued on the money it held. In the UK, similar deposit schemes were initially voluntary, but have become government-backed in recent years.

If the government is serious about reforming the rental sector, it has more work to do. Let’s hope it is up to the challenge. As Minister Finneran also said last week, “the mark of a humane society is how it protects its weaker members”.