New home for Lorraine but short lease a concern

In March, The Anglo-Celt spoke to two women facing eviction as the Dáil voted to lift the Winter eviction ban. We caught up with them again to find out how their efforts to find a new home have gone...

Lorraine, a mother of four in her 50s who works for the HSE, has found a place to live, although she says it’s far from ideal and they were forced to give up their pets.

Until recently she was in private rented accommodation but her landlord decided to sell the property.

Prior to that, Lorraine was forced to leave her family home and claims to have been the subject of domestic abuse at the hands of her ex-husband, who she also says took their life savings.

Lorraine says that, after multiple refusals, she jumped at the first house she was offered.

“We looked at a lot of places and they all turned us down. It’s [the new house] not in an area that we wanted. They wouldn’t take pets, we had a dog and a few cats, which was really hard for the kids, one was a 21st birthday present for my daughter so that was really upsetting for us, but we had to live somewhere.”

The move has cost her a lot of money.

“I couldn’t get time off work, so we had to move over a month, so we had to pay rent in two places over a month, plus a deposit. We had to borrow money to afford it. One week we had people to help us move, but another time we had nobody and had to borrow a van to help us move, which cost us more money. It cost us a couple of thousand just to move.”

Despite being at the top pay scale in her job, Lorraine previously told us how she was living from cheque to cheque in the “squeezed” middle, not entitled to any supports.

There were other hidden costs associated with the move.

“The rent in the new place is €900, and the deposit was €900. We also had to pay €900 rent in the previous place, which wouldn’t usually happen.

“We’ve also been forced to eat out for a lot of meals because all of our stuff has been piled into the kitchen, and we literally can’t get to the fridge or cooker because we don’t have time to unpack. I’d buy a packet of sandwiches and eat one every day to try to string it out. We can’t access the washing machine so we’ve been forced to use the laundrette. This all adds up over time. I don’t even want to know the total cost. We’re paying more for petrol because we’re living further away from work,” she reveals.

The size of the new house also adds to her costs going forward.

“It’s a smaller house, which isn’t much of a problem, but we don’t have a lot of room for our stuff, so we’ve had to give a lot of our possessions away and, for some of our other things, we might have to pay to put them into storage.”

Short lease

She says the short lease length is also a cause of concern.

“It’s a six-month lease, so when that time is up, they could tell us we have to move out. We’re living precariously. We were rejected so many times that, when we were accepted, we just said yes out of panic in case we didn’t get anywhere else. You normally have a year [lease].”

Lorraine says her new home is close to that of her ex-husband, which she says is a cause of concern.

“I don’t know exactly where he lives, but I hear it’s on the opposite side of the town where we live. This makes me feel very uncomfortable so I just keep my fingers crossed that I don’t bump into him.”

She hopes not to have to move for a long time again.

“People would have said both myself and my daughter were quite good bets for landlords because we’re both working in good jobs, but we had a lot of rejection. We never heard back from anyone, we’d just get an email saying we didn’t get it. It was surprisingly hard to move, I hope I don’t have to move again for a long time.”