Tenants facing eviction from Cork apartments urge council to intervene
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Twenty tenants facing eviction from Cork City’s Chorister’s House apartments have appealed to Cork City Council to use the tenant in situ scheme to buy the building before they face homelessness.
Tenants in 24 units in Chorister’s House on Dean Street were served eviction notices by their private landlord on May 30 last.
Some residents were told they need to leave by November 27, while tenants with longer tenure must quit by January 10, 2024. Just four tenants have found alternative accommodation.
Tenants who spoke to the Irish Examiner said they feared it was impossible to find alternative accommodation in the city’s pressured rental market and that they had written to Cork City Council asking them to use the tenant in situ scheme to buy the building and temporarily rehouse residents while works are carried out.
Chorister’s House, behind St Fin Barre’s Cathedral, is a listed building dating to the 1760s. It was renovated as 24 holiday letting units in the 1990s.
However, they are in use as self-contained bedsit apartments by long-term tenants, some of whom have lived there for nearly 10 years.
The property owner put the building up for sale with tenants in situ in 2022, with an asking price of €2.5m and an annual rental income of €200,000.
According to a notice to quit seen by the , issues with the building were identified during the sale process in conjunction with “architects, engineers and officers from Cork City Council” that cannot be rectified with tenants in place.
The property was taken off the market temporarily and the landlord intends to sell the building when renovation works have been carried out.
Eamon de Staic is a teacher and student currently completing a master’s degree who has been living in Chorister’s House since 2018.
“It’s very upsetting, almost as soon as the eviction ban was lifted, to be told that my home of the last five and half years will be sold,” Mr de Staic said.
He and other tenants contacted Cork City Council’s tenant in situ service in June and July, but received what he described as a “cursory response” to their requests that the local authority use the scheme to purchase the building.
The Tenant in Situ scheme, brought in to alleviate the impact of the lifting of the national eviction ban in April of this year, resulted in just three properties being bought by Cork City Council in its first eight months of operation, according to a response to councillors’ queries at the time the eviction ban was lifted.
Another tenant of Chorister’s House, who did not wish to be named, is on disability allowance and is due to have surgery on a heart valve in November. The date of his notice to quit is November 27.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” he said. “There’s absolutely nothing out there in terms of rentals. It’s very stressful and I am waiting on surgery later on in the year so the timing is not great.”
The current owner of Chorister’s House declined to comment.