Thousands of Tipperary tenants are in rent arrears

According to figures obtained by the Tipperary Star, 3,531 council tenants were in rent arrears in May.

This is the response to a Freedom of Information request made to the Tipperary County Council. And, according to this response, 6,299 tenants rent Local Authority/Ras & Long term lease houses. Tenancies in rent arrears represent 56.1% of those accounts. Meanwhile, 2,768 (43.9%) were in credit at the end of March.

The Tipperary Star made the request following concerns raised at the March meeting of the Nenagh Municipal District Council by Councillor Seamus Morris and Cllr Ger Darcy.

The councillors were concerned about reports made to them by tenants who believed they were up to date on rent and were being hit with bills exceeding €4,000.

It emerged that €1,817,265 was owed to the council in rent at the end of January 2022.
In February, that figure jumped to €2,180,886.00 and €2,425,606.00 in March.

Artificial Inflation

However, Tipperary County Council says that an ongoing rent review is 'artificially inflating' the figures for the first few months of 2022. In response to the original query made by the Tipperary Star, the council said:

"At the end of January 2022, more than 1,000 rent forms out of 6,000 had not been returned by tenants, which resulted in those households being moved temporarily to a maximum rent figure on our accounts until such time as they returned their forms. This has resulted in an artificially inflated arrears figure for the months of January and February and is not a true reflection of the actual figure.”

They also say when making comparisons, one should use a set point in time.

They say the National Oversight and Audit Commission (NOAC) uses the year-end figure for comparison.
Using the end of year figures obtained in the FOI response, we were able to compare rent arrears between 2017 and 2021.

In December 2017, rent arrears stood at €783,276.00. Since then the end of year rent arrears has exceeded one million euro.

Differential Rent Scheme

In his address to Nenagh MD, Cllr Morris said he had been monitoring the rent arrear figures since 2018.
He was concerned that introducing the Differential Rent Scheme, which came into effect in the summer of 2018, would cause rent arrears to increase significantly.

He previously raised the issue in 2019 when he was concerned that a rent increase would cause hardship for some households.

The Differential Rent Scheme 2018 consolidated rents from several schemes and across areas in Tipperary.

This meant that some tenants would have higher rents than they had previously.

According to the Tipperary County Council annual report for 2017, the average rent stood at €43.18. In 2018 the average rent went to €54.22, and in 2020 it was €51.86.

In March, Cllr Ger Darcy supported Cllr Morris in his concerns, saying receiving these notices was frightening for tenants.
He suggested that tenants were being notified of large sums because of ‘poor management’ on the part of the council.

The Tipperary Star asked Tipperary County Council to explain the procedure for notifying tenants of rent arrears on their accounts. We received the following response:

"Tenants are either phoned or written to with regard to rent arrears. Revenue staff officers along with rent clerical staff engage on a regular basis with tenants. Statements are also issued to tenants to show where payments are in arrears or missed.

Tipperary County Council say they had a 97% rent collection rate in 2021.

We were unable to verify this claim. However, based on the February 2022 Management Report to Council, it appears the collection rate was reported as 95%.

Deep Dive

Finally, Cllr Morris was concerned that the Family Income Supplement was being included in income assessments and that the council were doing ‘deep dives’ into tenants' incomes.

The council confirmed to the Tipperary Star that they have access to information from the Social Welfare system when assessing a tenant's income level but otherwise rely on self-reporting.

An issue for many

Cllr Morris this week told the Tipperary Star that he does not think the situation has improved in recent months. He said he has had another person come to him with rent arrears in the thousands in the past couple of weeks. Cllr Morris also said people are being referred to MABS, which is unacceptable.

"People have enough stress as it is, especially right now.
"MABS are busy enough without having to deal with the council," said Cllr Morris.

Cllr Morris says he has found the information difficult, time-consuming, and confusing to understand. However, he believes this issue is essential to many people and worth examining.

He would like to see an emergency meeting on housing at the council to discuss the issues, including rent arrears.

Getting Help

At the March meeting of the Nenagh Municipal District and throughout enquiries made by the Tipperary Star, the council has advised tenants in difficulty to contact them. They say they will do what they can to assist households in financial hardship.

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