Poor living conditions, the colossal cost, still living in their adolescent bedroom well after adolescence has left; the topic of young Irish people as situated in the housing crisis canon discourse is never-ending. Yet, for Laura Kiely, her experience of an unliveable living situation took a major toll on her health.
Your Lordship, here lies over half of my hard-earned wages. How blessed you are via the virtue of inherited property. I bow down to your merited status of home-owner. You deserve it, at the sublime cost of all below you…
The term ‘landlord’ has never been equated with peace and love. But in the last 12 years alone it has gained an ungodly, feudal-like reputation. So much so, that many wish to be referred to by any other term. I once overheard a man say that he was not bothered to rent out his property owing to said reputation. Pah, people need homes? Not on my clean rep.
I wished to posit, but Sir, the power lies in your hands whether or not you want to be a good or a bad landlord! Oh sir - the power! I know which path my ex-landlord chose. Question is: how many times? How many others were affected by the unregulated acquisition of this man’s power? All for a grand total of €80,400 in just one year, but I’ll get to figures later.
Before I begin, I would like to flag that my impetus for writing is not a shallow cry for sympathy but rather a call to action by directly attaching the human element. Relaying my personal experiences with housing in Dublin is to demonstrate the lived reality of being on the receiving end of unregulated landlord behaviour. Unfortunately, my experience is just one of many, and there are many more after that.
Renting in Ireland is perhaps one of the worst things you could do to your bank account – that is, if we continue to view housing as a coveted commodity over an essential need. Because folks, I’m here to tell you – that’s precisely what landlords are allowed to think it is. You are no more a tenant than a consumer asking for “too much” when you inform them of the black mould permeating the home.
From September 2023 to September 2024, I had the serene privilege of paying €900 (excluding bills) a month for a room black with mould. I shared this space with a house-spider infestation, which often felt more like an invasion of their space; given how dilapidated the house was, it was easy to deduce the spiders had been living there “rent free” for a long time.
The problems were relentless. Nothing about the house was liveable. Every surface was obscured in filth, evidently there for a long time since cleaning it proved extremely tenacious. The scene was a product of having tenants in and out over the years without a single cleaner hired in between. However, it was safe to assume it was still pretty dire for the primordial tenants.
The issue of dampness was particularly disastrous in my bedroom. From my own earnings, (because my landlord would never) I purchased a dehumidifier. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the optimal indoor relative humidity falls between 30% and 50% and should never exceed 60%. When I turned it on for the first time, it presented 95%. Every morning, I turned it on (it was too loud to leave on at night) and by the time I returned from campus, eight or nine hours later, the lowest it would ever be down to was 74%. My clothes were sticky with dampness, eventually growing mould, and when my alarm went off each morning, the screen on my phone was slippery with condensation.
The first night I spent in this room was accompanied by a severe panic attack. I knew I had to sleep there. I ended up watching 1950’s Cinderella on my phone under the covers, coming up for infected air every few minutes on a hot early-September night. I was rostered for work, which meant I had to spend the following two nights there again (my boyfriend lived too far away). I ended up taking a week off to go home to Sligo. Consequently, I went a whole week without wages and was already preparing to spend money on items to repair my room. I did not get reimbursed on request with photo evidence (a breakage of RTB policy). Why would he reimburse a hapless, powerless student? Pah, as if!
I was lucky enough that at the start of the academic term my boyfriend and his father gave up their Saturday to perform a DIY job on the mould in my room alone, coming over with masks, gloves and toxic chemicals – another unreimbursed purchase from my earnings. They spent a whole day removing the mould (that they could) and painting over it with anti-mold paint. Albeit, controlling the pervasiveness of black specs creeping across my walls proved just as difficult as trying to prevent the humidity level from climbing back to the initial 94%. Their unassailable bond excluded me in a relentless game of tug-a-war.
The WHO outlines that indoor air pollution has been linked to a host of physical health-related risks. From more minor challenges like allergies and rashes, to severe effects on the respiratory system, that can exacerbate pre-existing conditions such as asthma or cystic fibrosis. Furthermore, it stresses that “about 15% of new childhood asthma in Europe can be attributed to indoor dampness.” The colonisation of your walls by mould spores is fostered by indoor dampness, and when that dampness is extreme, so too is the mould growth.
Research conducted by Dr. Mike Brennan and Dr. Deirdre Halloran in a paper ‘Mould and Minimum Standards’ published by the Houses of the Oireachtas in June of 2024 steadily defines black mould:
“Black mould is the common name for the microfungus Stachybotrys chartarum. While rare in nature, this fungus can often occur in poorly ventilated and damp buildings growing in cellulose-rich building materials (e.g. gypsum-based plasterboard, wallpaper, etc.). It usually appears in a spotted pattern (spots being the area where spores have germinated), with these spots growing into each other and forming a solid covering on the surface if not treated.”
Adjacency to black mould can cause and exasperate the following: Nasal Congestion, Fatigue, Infection, Immune Suppression, Allergies, Sore Throat, Red Eye, Headache, Sneezing, Dry Skin, Nausea (I had this one the most), Dizziness, Wheezing and worst of all, Pneumonitis. Oh, and it’s like, very confronting to look at, never mind live with.
Dr. Brennan and Dr. Halloran conclude their research by emphasising the necessity for Ireland to get on par with their close-by counterparts:
“While Ireland does have a legal framework for addressing mould in social and private housing, the UK and France have more explicit regulations and robust enforcement mechanisms. […] There is much to be learnt from the UK’s approach, including the stricter timelines for addressing mould issues, enhanced enforcement through increased inspections and penalties for noncompliance.”
The RTB showcases an illustrative list of landlord responsibilities, none of which I could see carried out in this dwelling. From mould, insects, general filth and acrid smell, a semi-working shower, dysfunctional electrical sockets and extreme dampness – all of these were brought up by me and ignored by my landlord. Renting out exclusively to students meant he could bully us into submission, as if we can’t research our own rights. But that’s just it, what is a list of “rights” on a government website with no real emphasis on regulating them?
Where the RTB presents a list of responsibilities of the landlord under “Minimum Standards Legislation” it states “the property should be free from damp and in good structural repair.” Ignored. It also states that “efforts must be made to prevent the infestation of vermin and pests.” Ignored. It outlines “Electrical wiring must be in good repair”, and yet I went weeks at a time at sundry points with a melted socket that violently zapped sparks at me. Perfect. Moreover, it states that landlords must “Reimburse the tenants for any repairs they carried out that they requested with the landlord which the landlord did not carry out within a reasonable time.” Ignored, ignored, ignored.
While all of this was diabolical enough, the landlord himself was an aggressive, unapologetic and unpredictable man. He had access to the home and would enter it unscheduled. This extended to our bedrooms. (Yes, you read that right). Whenever we timidly informed him of a problem, he just relayed that he’d be “over some day during the week” – no specific time or day. He just spawned.
Reader, this is no quip, when I tell you that one morning I was abruptly awoken by shouts on the other side of my wall. One voice was my housemate’s, the other unfamiliar. What I walked in on was this man flailing his limbs, pointing a faeces-kissed toilet plunger in my housemate’s direction, threatening her with vague allusions of eviction. (For context, the toilet in the en-suite wasn’t flushing for weeks.) As this was a shared room (because of course it was), the other tenant was still in bed, the duvet covering enough of her frightened face so she could still see the highly disconcerting theatrics unfolding in her very bedroom.
At this point, plunger still in hand, he turned to me and referred to me as the “headache sending him emails.” Translation: I wrote him three separate emails over one month, endeavouring to have the living conditions made even adjacent to RTB’s published responsibilities. How dare I ask for the bare minimum for €900 a month. How dare any of us eight tenants ask for that?
In one month, this man obtained €6,700. Six single bedrooms at €900 each, and one shared twin room with €650 per person, or €1,300 total. In a year, he made €80,400 – miles more than most people’s annual income for real, hard work. Feudal times.
Moreover, our deposits were two months’ rent (another breakage of RTB policy) which we all coughed up somehow to secure somewhere to live in the tight run up to college starting back. When you know people are desperate, have nowhere else to go, and are presented with a market that doesn’t want them back, they’re going to pay it. Additionally, having €1,800 at stake made it impossible for me to just up and leave.
For the most part, we discuss the Irish housing crisis in exclusively financial terms; the sheer scale of cost is consistently an item of discord. While the negative impact on mental health is an issue brought up frequently enough, it is often linked to the cost and less so to the living conditions under which we are forced to ‘live’. Money is not the only reason why so many young people choose to live at home, despite having well-paying jobs. They’re aware of how near-impossible it is to find liveable living conditions. Of course, for people like me, we have no choice. Hailing from Sligo, a commute to campus was out of the question.
Reasons as such are why we get tethered to these unbearable situations. In this tight run up to college, students are accepting foul conditions every August and September so as not to be forced to defer a year of studies. They see pictures, not attend physical viewings, as many people are often abroad during the summer, unable to see for themselves the property they are paying a hefty deposit for - before they even breathe the stale, damp air.
A report published by the Irish Times in December of 2024 states that nearly 75% of private rental properties inspected by councils failed to meet minimum standards. Failed chronically is more fitting. At one point, during my tenancy in hell, a deceased bird carcass dropped out from a hole in the kitchen ceiling. Thankfully, I was not there to witness it. However, my housemate refused to send the landlord the images he took as he believed it was “not necessary.” Allow me to deconstruct your confusion. My housemate had been unfairly evicted by the same landlord from a separate property (because they always own multiple, huh) the academic year previous. He was subsequently put into the one we then shared. I could surmise that this was his squeamish reasoning for not contacting the volatile wolf. Additionally, as with many of them, this said wolf refused to communicate over text messaging because evidently you cannot record a violation of your rights over a phone call. Well, I’m certainly not tech-savvy enough for that…
The Irish Times report continues by relaying that “of the 61,141 private rental inspections carried out countrywide until the end of September, 44,699 — or 71% — failed to meet minimum standards, according to new figures received under Freedom of Information.” What’s more, the discourse around introducing an NCT-style inspection system of dwellings in the effort to regulate living conditions is always marred with comments by spokespersons from housing agencies stating that their expert-knowledge of the rental market can assure you this will only reduce supply. Because apparently the health and safety of your tenant is not a pressing concern. Like I said, we’re taken as consumers not tenants.
From appetite, to sleep, to mood – which heavily affected my social life, to academic performance to financial stability and so forth, nothing was untouched.
Every young person in Ireland has been exposed to rental adverts from hell. My landlord stuffed eight UCD students in a house not fit for even the least hygienic person you know, and got €80,400 for his divine generosity. He molded (see my pun?) a utility room into a bedroom for one girl, threw a bed in there, sound job. €900 please. He turned a garage into another room. €900 please. Of course, the downstairs living room was also turned into a bedroom – double bed for this lucky tenant though! – €900 please. But look, he’s helping us right? It’s pure altruism, really. So what if there’s spiders, bathroom slugs, mould and a dead bird? We’re in a crisis for Pete’s Sake! And he’s good enough to put a freckly roof over our silly, little, unknowing student heads. So quit your whining! Oh, you’ve lost ten pounds in six weeks because you’ve completely lost your appetite? Sounds like a little snowflake-you problem…
What feels impossible to put into words is the extent to which my mental and physical health were sorely impacted by this living experience. Language often limits the capacity of such scales. After one week of living there, I considered deferring college for a year to get a second chance at finding somewhere liveable as the effect on every aspect of my life had become crystal clear. From appetite, to sleep, to mood – which heavily affected my social life, to academic performance to financial stability and so forth, nothing was untouched.
Having friends and family members comment on my weight as if it was ever a choice to eat less. The kitchen was not usable so buying food out of the house became a daily purchase – choosing what time of the day I got to eat, to avoid distractions from hunger when I sat down to do college work, became routine. Seeing the Student Union shop lunch deal go up a euro was catastrophic.
But it’s more than that. It’s how I felt about myself. When a situation gets so dire, dissociation seeps in – it’s not happening to me, it’s happening to her. I could not have predicted how much a physical environment would belittle my self-perception. That – well if I live here, it’s probably what I deserve. Why should I deserve better?
By January, with the air in my room colder than ever, my breath in front of me every time I parted my lips, spider webs splayed across the black-speckled ceiling, finding green spores in my white bra – mental breakdown ensued. It wasn’t just me up for grabs; it was my relationships too – one of which was my boyfriend of two years. Of course, many factors play into the breakdown of a romantic relationship, but the complete destruction of my mental health was certainly the biggest player.
The only way I got through any of this was because – above all – one of my housemates was my best friend. Together we encouraged each other to keep going, we held each other’s hand on any rare occasion we used the kitchen to cook something as measly as instant noodles – holding our breath as we watched a slug slime its way across the wall. We stayed in the library together late every night as there was no “home” to go to. Solidarity and shared trauma was the sole reason I stayed remotely sane. Rachel, I love you.
Looking back to this year of college, it is spoiled with a time so dreadful that I have nightmares where I'm still there. As much as writing this feels like talking into a void, considering the copious amounts of articles about the housing crisis published monthly, attaching the human element – as with any crisis – is essential. There are countless articles out there that provide us with statistics from surveys about how many people from ages X to Y are struggling mentally. Poor living conditions, the colossal cost, still living in their adolescent bedroom well after adolescence has left; the topic of young Irish people’s mental health as situated in the housing crisis canon discourse is neverending.
Figures and statistics are rarely enough to incite a call for action. After twelve months of living beside myself, trying to separate myself from my reality, all I can think now is, what a waste of life not lived. While at times I tried my best with what I had, every task in life was made harder. Writing essays on an empty stomach, skipping showers because they were too much hassle, almost getting sacked from my restaurant job as I was constantly rundown and out of beat. Leaving my ex-boyfriend’s house on a Sunday evening in tears because it was so hard going back to a house that literally scared me. Does writing this feel cathartic towards my own trauma? Maybe. Real question is, would my ex-landlord be moved enough by reading this to change his ways?