St Helen’s Court residents fight eviction once again

People Before Profit TD for Dun Laoghaire Richard Boyd Barrett says he is accompanying St Helen’s Court tenants to a Residential Tenancies Board meeting today to appeal their threatened eviction by a vulture fund.

It is understood that eight tenants in Dun Laoghaire are at the risk of imminent eviction.

Deputy Boyd Barrett said it was “outrageous to evict people in the middle of a pandemic” and accused the landlord of “cynically exploiting loopholes” in the Residential Tenancies Act.

The tenants of St Helen’s Court in Dún Laoghaire have been resisting attempts by the landlord to evict them since early 2017.

There are 20 apartments in the complex with 10 currently occupied.

However, the landlord, Donegal-based company Mill Street Projects Ltd, has only served eviction notices to eight tenancies.

An attempt by a landlord to evict 10 households would violate the “Tyrrelstown Amendment”, meaning if all 10 units are sold, the tenants may stay in situ.

Deputy Boyd Barrett said: “It is just outrageous that these tenants are facing yet another attempt to get them out of their homes.

“The current vulture fund and the previous landlord have been cynically exploiting the loopholes in the Residential Tenancies Act to try and get these tenants out in order to either sell or re-let at a much higher rent.

“The vulture fund that owns the block is claiming that they want to sell eight of the 20 apartments and are using this grounds of sale to evict the eight tenants.

“This is just not credible, there are 10 empty apartments that have been lying there for nearly two years.

“If they want to sell apartments, why not sell the empty ones.

“This manipulation of the law to increase their profits is just unacceptable and the fact that they are actually proceeding with this in the middle of a pandemic, makes the whole thing worse.

“I will be attending a number of hearings this week with the eight tenants, and I will be there at 2.15pm today with a tenant who has been living in St Helen’s for 13 years and is determined to fight this eviction to the very end.”