The curious incident of the receiver and the apartment

I listened closely to playback yesterday.  It featured an item from Liveline during the week. The caller had recorded how bailiffs had entered his home to evict him, his wife and his child.  Nobody disputed that he hadn’t been a good tenant or paid his rent.  He was being evicted because his landlord was bankrupt and the liquidator was seizing the property with a view to putting someone else in. His belongings will end up on the side of the street.

And it brought back to me a most recent case here in Wexford. About a month ago a Bulgarian couple received a solicitors letter instructing them to leave within a week.  The couple have poor English and left it about a week before they came to me.

Their story was that they had rented their apartment in March 2015 through a Wexford town agency and it was owned by a man who was in severe financial difficulty. In February this year a liquidator ad contacted them and said that in future they were to pay rent to a new renting agency.  They’ve done this and have an exemplary record of never missing a date. They both work, not on great money, but they are triers.

In September they had a little boy.  And this is when the trouble started. First a letter from a Limerick based solicitor telling them to get out arrived. The couple didn’t understand the significance of so, they left it for 2 weeks before they contacted me. Their English is not great but when there’s a new arrival in the house your world is turned upside down. Priorities go out the window.

Under Irish law a landlord can only evict in the case of someone of that duration in private rented accommodation if there is anti-social behaviour or if they have a relative that needs the house.  Neither applies in this case. The receiver is by all accounts a heavy hitter. He was behind a major closure of a business premises in Dublin last year following a lightning move to shut. So I knew there was real trouble on the way.

I contacted my Labour colleague Aideen Hayden who heads up Threshold. Aideen told me that where as the law between a landlord and a tenant is clear that the position of a receiver is a grey area when it comes to tenants rights.  Having got good advice as to how to proceed we got an appeal into the PRTB in Clonakilty.  There is a term limit of 28 days on submitting an appeal. 

The couple called to other renting agencies.  Availability in Wexford was not good.  The best on offer was in Clonard Village and was about 20% more expensive.  And at the back of it all was a letter setting out no reason as to why they should go and one that showed no understanding of the reality that it was a family the receiver was dealing with and not a property.

Why is it that it seems to be non national families who get this type of treatment? Why is it that a revenue stream in rent wasn’t enough for the mortgage bank who were hell bent on getting their pound of flesh? Why is it that the law that applies to landlords is not the same as that applied to receivers?

If a landlord sent the type of letter I’ve seen he’d been strung up. But a receiver acting for a bank that we the taxpayers have bailed out seems to sail on regardless.  That is until an abrupt phonecall from the agent brought the matter to a rapid conclusion. 

The letter was all a misunderstanding. The solicitor got it wrong. You can continue to live there and yes of course, please send us the rent through the usual channels. Relief all round, a young family with a new born baby boy won’t be homeless in the run in to Christmas. But of course if they were, it wouldn’t have been the first time, would it?