City tenants will have ‘less protection’ in new lease scheme

Date Published: 11-Feb-2010

People accepting a five-year tenancy agreement on one of 54 affordable homes controversially leased to a voluntary housing agency could be summarily evicted at a month’s notice and will lose their status on the local authority housing list, according to a legal expert.

Lecturer in Housing Law and Policy at NUI Galway, Dr Padraic Kenna has said that tenants of Cluid Housing Association will be stripped of any rights provided by the legislation governing private and local authority tenancies.

Tenants accepting the five-year tenures will also lose their status on the housing list, he claimed.

Dr Kenna also described the appointment of Cluid without a public procurement process as “very strange” and believed it to be in breach of EU Competition regulations, which could leave the Council liable to pay a substantial fine if found to have acted unlawfully by the EU Commission.

Some 54 affordable houses are to be leased to Cluid for a period of five years to accommodate people from the local authority’s housing list. Concerns were raised at Monday evening’s City Council meeting that tenants would face an uncertain future at the expiration of the five years, but assurances were given that they would not lose credit on the housing list for the duration.

However, Dr Kenna claimed that tenants of the scheme will necessarily lose their status on the housing list by accepting the agreement according to the provisions of the Housing Act, and assurances to the contrary from city officials were “not worth much”.

“Private tenancies are legislated for by the Residential Tenancies Act 2004, and local authority tenancies are regulated by the various Housing Acts but there is no provision at all for housing associations,” he said. “They can offer people any kind of tenancy they like.”

Dr Kenna said that tenants of such agreements can be evicted from their homes without the citation of a reason at four weeks’ notice. “Not all housing associations use this type of tenancy agreements, but Cluid do,” he said.

The author of Housing Law, Rights and Policy, which is due to be published later this year, also described it as “very strange” that there had been no tendering process prior to the appointment of Cluid.

Read more on page 1 of the Galway City Tribune