Dublin City Council are "extremely limited" in buying a city centre apartment block which would prevent over 100 tenants from facing homelessness, a council chief has said.
Tenants in Tathony House apartment block, in Dublin 8, protested outside City Hall calling for the local authority to buy the property. The landlord decided to sell the entire building and served tenants with eviction notices.
Under a recently introduced law, where a landlord proposes to sell ten or more units within a single multi-unit development within a period of six months, that sale will be subject to the existing tenants remaining in situ. However, the landlord argued in the eviction notices he is exempt from this law because it would cause him "undue hardship" to sell the building with the tenants in situ.
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The tenants previously said they will contest this at the Rental Tenancies Board and called on Dublin City Council to step in and buy the block of apartments. They cited Cork City Council buying the Leeside apartments to prevent the tenants entering homelessness as a precedent for DCC stepping in.
Assistant Chief Executive with responsibility for Housing Coilin O'Reilly told councillors: "Not withstanding the immense sympathy we have for the situation, our options here are extremely limited for what we can do within the framework. I am sorry we can't do more for the people living there."
"I just can't imagine the worry, stress and upset it has caused them. At the same time, I also have to work through a legal framework and only have the schemes that are available to me and to the Department."
He added: "So I can be imaginative but I can't just make things happen that are not Government policy or that are outside of our legal powers."
Of the 35 units in the block, there are no tenants in receipt of social housing supports and three tenants have applied and are qualified for social housing, a DCC review found. Mr O'Reilly said if all the residents were social housing tenants, "it would be the simplest thing in the world" and DCC would buy the block.
He added that even if they were all social housing tenants there were other hurdles to buying the block. Mr O'Reilly said the Council has no compulsory powers to buy the block, the property would have to be in the appropriate condition and using the cost rental scheme to buy the block would result in current tenants becoming cost rental tenants even if they do not qualify for the scheme.
The Housing Chief said the example of the Cork City Council buying the Leeside apartments is not applicable as there was a mix of social and private tenants in the block and all of the latter were asked to leave after the purchase. He also warned the purchase could cause a precedent of DCC stepping into buy private blocks which owners could take advantage of.
Tenant James O'Toole had been living in Tathony House on Bow Lane D8 for over 13 years. He previously told Dublin Live he grew up in the area and is devastated to have to leave his home.
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