> There has “always been damp” in the two-bedroom apartment Elaine Melo, her partner David Lawless and their eight-month-old son, Ian, call home. “But it has got really bad in the last three years,” says Melo. Ian, who has Down syndrome, also has breathing difficulties. His medical social worker says he needs a “warm home without damp or mould”. Melo has sought help from their landlord, the letting agency and Dublin City Council, but nothing has improved. The apartment is on the third floor of an apartment block in Inchicore, Dublin. The lift, says Melo, has never worked.
I just don’t understand the nastiness that exists out there among many landlords.
We had one of the worst landlords I’ve ever dealt with a few years ago.
Damp in every room. Front door seal was fucked so when it rained hard, we’d have to mop puddles in the hall. Black mould in the bathroom. Skirting board in the bathroom was spongy and flaking off, woodlice everywhere, when autumn hit, mushrooms would grow outside the shower in the skirting board. The shower leaked into the kitchen. We had an infestation of sewer flies that he tried to pass off as “fruit flies” in the middle of fucking November. Yeah turns out the pipe under the sink was never sealed correctly, and the warm, moist conditions were perfect for tiny flies to swarm.
Solutions offered by the landlord:
Pop a towel in the hall against the front door.
Paint over the mould so you won’t see it.
Avoid hitting off the skirting board when you’re hoovering (cos that’ll clearly help with the damp!)
Didn’t believe us about the mushrooms until I sent a video of us christening the mushroom “Robert” and sending a photo a week of his growth.
Solution to the flies was “Well, have you tried washing your plates off properly?”
The solution to the leaking shower is hilarious. After being fobbed off by three weeks by the landlord about getting a plumber out, I told him that I’d just get one out myself and take the cost out of the rent. He had someone out the next day. I KNEW the entire bottom of the shower and skirting board needed to be replaced.
He told the plumber it was a few loose tiles causing “some dripping” in the kitchen.
Plumber was horrified when he came up, said there’s no way replacing a few tiles would fix that and that we could have gone through the ceiling at any moment.
He called our landlord to get him to sign off on the now major repair work. He refused. Said he’d get a second opinion. But the plumber told us we couldn’t use the shower anymore, that it was incredibly dangerous.
So for a week we had to go to my mother’s to shower while our landlord dicked around. He did eventually replace the shower but only after I held the rent back for two weeks, I knew it was risky but we had the plumber to back us up if things escalated.
My all time favourite solution he had, was when the handle on our front door went. It had been loose for weeks, we had told him it needed replacing. He said he’d get around to it. Lo and behold, one day the handle wouldn’t close. At all. The door would not connect and would pop open.
Unfortunately we lived in a bad drug area and had already had one attempted break-in. So we were royally pissed when he offered a solution. Until he could come down and inspect the handle himself, he proposed we “pop an armchair” against the door.
I lost my shit. Told him there were kids in the house and if anything happened HE would be responsible as we have documented proof that the house is unsecure, unsafe, and that we had asked him multiple times to fix it.
Again, he was down the next day and got it sorted, all while mumbling about me under his breath. He didn’t like me at all because I took none of his bullshit, I had no issues telling him “As you have not responded to our urgent request to have the front door seen to, I will be contacting a locksmith and deducting the invoice from this month’s rent.”
He hated that because I always made sure to text, not call him, so I had EVERYTHING documented.
This is the duality of ‘big’ business/investment vs small landlord ownership. Not defending the absolute state of renting in this country. Nor do I think large-scale business rental paradigm is a sensible scenario, but small landlord’s will absolutely take this piss when renting – high rent, poor quality housing. At least there is some semblance of professionalism in corporate rentals. Arrggghh – choking on my own rage here.
The way it’s going I’m guessing random landlords will sell up, which will leave those who own a home, plus a rental market that is owned and controlled by large institutions.
Can one name and shame these landlords? Like if their name was in the paper would that be allowed?
There should be some sort of government house inspection for rental properties, and if it’s not up to scratch, can’t be rented. Like the NCT for property.
I mean good, but the numbers are still so low. Only 254 notices issued last year, and the escalation process doesnt seem like a sure or quick thing either. And comparing it to the number of properties that actually need work to reach the bare minimum standards, this is going to be incredibly slow improvement.
My advice to anyone who has a landlord who won’t fix or sort out any problems is document any problem and keep a record of any messages sent to your landlord.
Your landlord is required under law to maintain the exterior and interior of a property and to carry out any necessary repairs in a timely fashion ensuring the property meets certain basic minimum standards.
This is one aspect of the housing crisis that gets glossed over I think, in both rentals and sold properties; the quality and finish of so many Irish homes is absolute dogshit to what you can find abroad.
Of course you’ll get absolute hovels everywhere and London especially is a nightmare, but I’ve recently moved to Berlin and am in the midst of the property hunt here, which is no picnic either. But the quality of the places in looking at are completely night and day compared to what I was scrabbling for in Ireland. I used to work in construction too and even many new builds were shitty, cheap, poky, built-on-price, bashed out shitheaps. Berlin’s not a new city of course, but your money goes so so so much further.
I’m not sure what obligations landlords are under here, but whatever it is, it’s working because I haven’t seen one single pane window, not one mouldy corner or a bathroom that looks like it was there from the 60s.
Housing standards and what we put up with in Ireland are fuckibg shocking. And blood-sucking landlords make it even worse when they can’t be arsed to do a tap of maintenance.
We have this arse ways. Families in need of housing should rent from the corpo. Young people starting g out or students should rent from private landlords after that you buy or move into social housing. Renting from private landlords should be short term and not a way of life.
The problem is the state isn’t providing social housing its using HAP to pay private LLs to do it. If they provided social housing there would be a lot less pressure on everybody there would be more choice and bad landlords wouldn’t get a look it. If a place is poor quality you’d just move.
11 comments
> There has “always been damp” in the two-bedroom apartment Elaine Melo, her partner David Lawless and their eight-month-old son, Ian, call home. “But it has got really bad in the last three years,” says Melo. Ian, who has Down syndrome, also has breathing difficulties. His medical social worker says he needs a “warm home without damp or mould”. Melo has sought help from their landlord, the letting agency and Dublin City Council, but nothing has improved. The apartment is on the third floor of an apartment block in Inchicore, Dublin. The lift, says Melo, has never worked.
I just don’t understand the nastiness that exists out there among many landlords.
We had one of the worst landlords I’ve ever dealt with a few years ago.
Damp in every room. Front door seal was fucked so when it rained hard, we’d have to mop puddles in the hall. Black mould in the bathroom. Skirting board in the bathroom was spongy and flaking off, woodlice everywhere, when autumn hit, mushrooms would grow outside the shower in the skirting board. The shower leaked into the kitchen. We had an infestation of sewer flies that he tried to pass off as “fruit flies” in the middle of fucking November. Yeah turns out the pipe under the sink was never sealed correctly, and the warm, moist conditions were perfect for tiny flies to swarm.
Solutions offered by the landlord:
Pop a towel in the hall against the front door.
Paint over the mould so you won’t see it.
Avoid hitting off the skirting board when you’re hoovering (cos that’ll clearly help with the damp!)
Didn’t believe us about the mushrooms until I sent a video of us christening the mushroom “Robert” and sending a photo a week of his growth.
Solution to the flies was “Well, have you tried washing your plates off properly?”
The solution to the leaking shower is hilarious. After being fobbed off by three weeks by the landlord about getting a plumber out, I told him that I’d just get one out myself and take the cost out of the rent. He had someone out the next day. I KNEW the entire bottom of the shower and skirting board needed to be replaced.
He told the plumber it was a few loose tiles causing “some dripping” in the kitchen.
Plumber was horrified when he came up, said there’s no way replacing a few tiles would fix that and that we could have gone through the ceiling at any moment.
He called our landlord to get him to sign off on the now major repair work. He refused. Said he’d get a second opinion. But the plumber told us we couldn’t use the shower anymore, that it was incredibly dangerous.
So for a week we had to go to my mother’s to shower while our landlord dicked around. He did eventually replace the shower but only after I held the rent back for two weeks, I knew it was risky but we had the plumber to back us up if things escalated.
My all time favourite solution he had, was when the handle on our front door went. It had been loose for weeks, we had told him it needed replacing. He said he’d get around to it. Lo and behold, one day the handle wouldn’t close. At all. The door would not connect and would pop open.
Unfortunately we lived in a bad drug area and had already had one attempted break-in. So we were royally pissed when he offered a solution. Until he could come down and inspect the handle himself, he proposed we “pop an armchair” against the door.
I lost my shit. Told him there were kids in the house and if anything happened HE would be responsible as we have documented proof that the house is unsecure, unsafe, and that we had asked him multiple times to fix it.
Again, he was down the next day and got it sorted, all while mumbling about me under his breath. He didn’t like me at all because I took none of his bullshit, I had no issues telling him “As you have not responded to our urgent request to have the front door seen to, I will be contacting a locksmith and deducting the invoice from this month’s rent.”
He hated that because I always made sure to text, not call him, so I had EVERYTHING documented.
This is the duality of ‘big’ business/investment vs small landlord ownership. Not defending the absolute state of renting in this country. Nor do I think large-scale business rental paradigm is a sensible scenario, but small landlord’s will absolutely take this piss when renting – high rent, poor quality housing. At least there is some semblance of professionalism in corporate rentals. Arrggghh – choking on my own rage here.
The way it’s going I’m guessing random landlords will sell up, which will leave those who own a home, plus a rental market that is owned and controlled by large institutions.
Can one name and shame these landlords? Like if their name was in the paper would that be allowed?
There should be some sort of government house inspection for rental properties, and if it’s not up to scratch, can’t be rented. Like the NCT for property.
I mean good, but the numbers are still so low. Only 254 notices issued last year, and the escalation process doesnt seem like a sure or quick thing either. And comparing it to the number of properties that actually need work to reach the bare minimum standards, this is going to be incredibly slow improvement.
My advice to anyone who has a landlord who won’t fix or sort out any problems is document any problem and keep a record of any messages sent to your landlord.
Your landlord is required under law to maintain the exterior and interior of a property and to carry out any necessary repairs in a timely fashion ensuring the property meets certain basic minimum standards.
https://www.threshold.ie/advice/dealing-with-problems-during-your-tenancy/standards-and-repairs/
This is one aspect of the housing crisis that gets glossed over I think, in both rentals and sold properties; the quality and finish of so many Irish homes is absolute dogshit to what you can find abroad.
Of course you’ll get absolute hovels everywhere and London especially is a nightmare, but I’ve recently moved to Berlin and am in the midst of the property hunt here, which is no picnic either. But the quality of the places in looking at are completely night and day compared to what I was scrabbling for in Ireland. I used to work in construction too and even many new builds were shitty, cheap, poky, built-on-price, bashed out shitheaps. Berlin’s not a new city of course, but your money goes so so so much further.
I’m not sure what obligations landlords are under here, but whatever it is, it’s working because I haven’t seen one single pane window, not one mouldy corner or a bathroom that looks like it was there from the 60s.
Housing standards and what we put up with in Ireland are fuckibg shocking. And blood-sucking landlords make it even worse when they can’t be arsed to do a tap of maintenance.
We have this arse ways. Families in need of housing should rent from the corpo. Young people starting g out or students should rent from private landlords after that you buy or move into social housing. Renting from private landlords should be short term and not a way of life.
The problem is the state isn’t providing social housing its using HAP to pay private LLs to do it. If they provided social housing there would be a lot less pressure on everybody there would be more choice and bad landlords wouldn’t get a look it. If a place is poor quality you’d just move.
