Tenants in a city centre apartment block are preparing to protest after all 35 apartments were served with eviction notices.
Tenant James O'Toole had been living in Tathony House on Bow Lane D8 for over 13 years. He previously told Dublin Live he grew up in the area and is devastated to have to leave his home.
The landlord has decided to sell the entire building and served tenants with eviction notices last week. Under a recently introduced law, where a landlord proposes to sell ten or more units within a single multi-unit development within a period of six months, that sale will be subject to the existing tenants remaining in situ.
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However, the landlord argued in the eviction notices he is exempt from this law because it would cause him "undue hardship" to sell the building with the tenants in situ. The tenants say they will contest this at the Rental Tenancies Board and call for Dublin City Council to step in and buy the block of apartments.
They cited Cork City Council buying the Leeside apartments to prevent the tenants entering homelessness as a precedent for DCC stepping in. The tenants will be protesting outside DCC's offices on Wood Quay at 3pm on Saturday.
Images of long queues outside house viewings are constantly playing on James' mind as he worries he may not be able to find anything near his place of work due to the housing crisis. He said: "I'm here since 2009 so I have to get 224 days notice because I'm here long term.
"Some of the other tenants will get different dates depending on how long they are here. It's a shock for everyone. He [the landlord] is selling the entire block.
He added: "It's a shock. We are all seeing the pictures of queues outside apartments and the state of the rental market at the moment. Whether it's now or on June 2, I don't think the rental market is going to have changed by then."
Dublin City Council did not respond to Dublin Live queries at the time of publishing. The landlord did not respond to previous queries made by Dublin Live.
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