Renters to pay price of Rent Hike Bill from Sunday
Renters to pay price of Rent Hike Bill from Sunday - The Labour Party
- President signs bill to pave the way for new rent rules which will cause rents to soar
Labour housing spokesperson Conor Sheehan TD has warned that renters will face severe pressure after President Connolly today signed the Government’s new rent legislation into law, paving the way for sweeping changes to rent rules from Sunday March 1st.
Deputy Sheehan said:
“The rip-off rent bill will rip into renters from Sunday. Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil forced through sweeping changes to our rent laws that have now been signed by the President. They ignored the warnings of renters, housing charities and experts. And the consequences for renters will be dire.
“The bottom line is simple. Renters trapped in Ireland’s dysfunctional housing market will pay the price for what this Government has done. Everything this Government has touched on housing has created more stress, more insecurity and more uncertainty. Rents have increased by more than 100 percent over the past decade. We heard today from the Daft report that the average 2-bed costs €2,086.
“Instead of freezing rents and bringing them down, Minister Browne’s rent hike will cause rents to go up by at least 10 percent because of the so-called market reset mechanism. Landlords will get a fresh opportunity to hike rents sharply.
“Renters cannot wait another year while rents climb higher and targets are quietly missed. Government keeps telling people that supply will fix everything, yet it fails to build at the scale required and misses its own housing targets time and again. Ministers continue to rely on the private market to solve a crisis they have failed to manage. That approach has not worked and it will not work now.
“There are political choices that Government could take. Labour would take a very different approach. We would transform the Land Development Agency into a State construction company with the power to plan, build and deliver homes at scale. We would expand State backed cost rental so that thousands more renters can access secure homes at below market rents. We would develop new financing models for small and medium sized builders through State backed equity partnerships to unlock sites that currently lie idle. We would also establish a State backed investment scheme to fund apartment construction, ringfenced for social and affordable housing, so that public investment serves the public good.
“If Government is serious about changing direction, it must set a clear and ambitious target for cost rental delivery over the lifetime of Building Homes, Delivering Communities. Cost rental offers a genuine alternative because rents reflect the real cost of construction and management, not what the market can squeeze from people.”