Long-term tenants will be "incredibly vulnerable” to homelessness after the Government reforms Rent Pressure Zones, a housing expert has warned. 

Earlier this week, Ministers announced that Rent Pressure Zones (RPZs) would be extended across the country - meaning a tenant’s rent cannot be increased by more than the rate of inflation or 2%, whichever is lower. 

However, they all proposed that landlords will be able to reset rents to market level at the end of each six year tenancy period. 

On The Pat Kenny Show, TU Dublin housing lecturer Lorcan Sirr warned that many landlords will want to significantly increase their profit margins. 

“People who have leases from before June 2022,” he said. 

“Under those leases, every six years, a landlord can for no reason ask a tenant to leave. 

“So, anybody who has a lease before 2022, the landlord has the perfectly legal right to evict them effectively and then wait until March next year and set a hugely increased rent. 

“Just for context, in the last six years, rents in Dublin have gone up by 31% and they’ve gone up by over 40% nationally. 

“So, that would be quite the hike that the landlord would be getting.” 

An apartment building under construction in Palmerstown. Picture by: noel bennett / Alamy. 24 January 2022

In the space of a decade, rents have doubled nationwide, with the price of property surging as the economy recovered from the impact of the banking crisis. 

Despite this, some tenants living in RPZs have been insulated from the huge increase in market rents. 

“If you are ensconced in a tenancy for the last five years or so, your rent will be about 60% of what the rents are today and the rent [increases] will have been capped at 2% per year,” Dr Sirr explained. 

“When that lease ends or if there’s a new lease arrangement by March next year, your rent is going to jump from whatever it is to the market rate - which is probably a jump of about 40%. 

“So, that’s how that happened and it’s going to be a huge, huge burden on people. 

“I can see an awful lot of people becoming homeless over this and it sounds kind of incredible to think that people who are currently renting, paying €1,500 or whatever per month would ever become homeless. 

“But this is how homelessness happens.” 

In the Programme for Government, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael said that,  “Increasing supply is the key to addressing the housing crisis”.

Last year, there were 30,330 new homes built in Ireland, down from 32,525 completed in 2023. 

Dr Sirr noted that it will take a “hell of a lot of supply” to bring rents down.

In a statement to Newstalk, the Department of Housing said the changes would "provide significantly stronger protections and greater certainty for renters". 

"In order to provide greater security of tenure for tenants than they currently have, the government will significantly restrict ‘no fault evictions’, which is where a landlord seeks to evict a tenant through no fault of the tenant," a spokesperson said.

"These changes will further enhance the current provision of tenancies of unlimited duration with the introduction of rolling tenancies of a minimum of six-years.

"The measures also provide greater certainty and protection against ‘no fault’ evictions, which will also be a critical intervention in preventing homelessness.

"The current system is not optimal – for renters or for potential new landlords – and changes need to be made. Without increasing supply, we will be under more and more pressure. The changes being proposed are one strand in the Government’s ambition to unlock increased housing delivery, a key element of the work to end homelessness across the state."

Main image: A homeless person's tent. Picture by: Alamy.com