St Helen’s Court Residents in Dún Laoghaire face immediate eviction by ruthless vulture fund if moratorium lifted
In a statement this morning, Richard Boyd Barrett, TD for People Before Profit, called on the government not to lift the moratorium on the eviction of tenants on April 5th.
Deputy Boyd Barrett said, for the government to lift the eviction moratorium would be a “heartless abandonment of tenants in the midst of a pandemic that will plunge many tenants into crisis and worsen the homelessness crisis.”
He said that lifting the eviction ban would open the door to unscrupulous vulture funds and landlords seeking to evict tenants in order to maximise their profits.
Deputy Boyd Barrett pointed to the plight of ten tenants in the St Helen’s Court apartment complex, who have faced repeated attempts by vulture funds over the last few years to mass evict all the tenants from the complex.
Deputy Boyd Barrett said that 8 household in the complex now face immediate eviction at the hands of the vulture funds if this moratorium is lifted.
The vulture fund recently succeeded in securing an eviction of the tenants utilising loopholes in the Residential Tenancies Act to get past the protections in the so-called “Tyrellstown Amendment”.
Deputy Boyd Barrett said: “There is likely to be a slew of unjust evictions if the government lifts the eviction moratorium on April 5th.
“It is unconscionable that Minister Darragh O Brien would allow that to happen. It will restart the cycle of evictions that has driven the homelessness crisis.
“The case of the St. Helen’s Court tenants highlights, in the most dramatic way, why the eviction ban should be retained. These tenants have done nothing wrong. They have always paid their rent. But all this vulture fund cares about is maximising their profits by evicting these tenants, thus shoring up the value of their investment. They do not care about the fate of the tenants and will put them out on the streets as soon as the moratorium is lifted.
“It’s bad enough that the government allow this to happen at any time, but to allow it to happen in the midst of the pandemic where the difficulty of sourcing alternative accommodation is ever greater, is scandalous.”