Janiedson da Silva dos Santos returned to his home in Santry, north Dublin, after work one evening in June to find the place smashed up, his belongings missing, his food thrown out and his room covered in dust.
“That was one of the worst moments I’ve ever had in my life. I felt treated like an animal. Like a dog,” he says.
Workmen had begun removing tiles in the bathroom, the lock on this bedroom door was broken and his electric bike and battery pack were gone.
Dos Santos (33), an electrical engineer from Brazil who moved to Ireland last year to study English, describes a nightmare situation dealing with the accommodation provider Leevin Ireland.
RM Block
He is not the only one.
Brazilian couple Gil Rudge (39) and Natalia Bonadia (36) claim Leevin forced them out of their home in Ashtown, Dublin 15, in June this year when they would not accept sharing their room with a third person.
The only other option given to them was to cover the cost of the triple room as two people, which would push their rent from €1,150 to €1,740 for a bedroom without a bathroom.
“There was no way [we could afford] to increase our rent by almost 50 per cent. We are also a couple, we are not going to live with another person in the room,” Rudge says.
The couple struggled to gather the money for another deposit on such short notice and withheld their final month’s rent, expecting it could be deducted from the deposit held by the landlord.
They received emails from Leevin saying the company had the right to repossess the property and remove any personal belongings.
They asked if their rent could be taken out of their deposit so they could find somewhere else to live, but Leevin refused.
“It seemed that I was the criminal, that I would have to run away from my house. That was the feeling. Because in a matter of two days, we packed everything we had,” Bonadia says.
Within two weeks the couple found another apartment and moved out on July 13th, reaching an agreement with Leevin to get the remainder of their deposit back less the days for which they owed rent.
Leevin Ireland was founded by Eduardo Gonzaga and claims to offer “a pleasant and affordable place to stay” and “a place to call home” for international students and professionals staying in Dublin.
Originally from Brazil, Gonzaga came to Ireland in 2013 and has since co-founded the Brazil-Ireland Chamber of Commerce. He became executive director of the Erin School of English and continues to lead the Leevin group.
The second director of Leevin is Italian Francisco Antonio Ferri Junior.
The latest financial statement filed for the company shows it had an income of more than €600,000 in 2023. Leevin Ireland has over 30 different properties across Dublin in its portfolio with over 200 types of vacancies on offer, according to its website.
A search of Residential Tenancies Board (RTB) disputes and tribunal records show several findings against the company.
One tribunal order, dated January 9th this year, fined Leevin €750 for unlawfully terminating a tenancy in Verdemont, Dublin.
The tenants, Joseph Glackin and Thais Santos, paid €1,190 in rent per month and shared the apartment with two other people.
They told the tribunal they had received a text from Leevin saying they must leave their accommodation at short notice because the property would “no longer be controlled” by the company.
They claimed someone from Leevin later called to the apartment when they were not there and tried to get into their bedroom, but it was locked.
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On a second occasion Glackin said another person started banging on the door in an impatient manner while he was showering. When he answered, the person said Leevin had sent him over to fix a fan – but there was no issue with any fan.
“The tenants felt intimidated by this incident and his fiancée had difficulty sleeping and was very nervous,” the tribunal report reads.
The couple found alternative accommodation shortly after these incidents.
All tenants who spoke to The Irish Times for this article said Leevin had given them a licence agreement, rather than a tenancy agreement, and were under the impression this reduced their rights as tenants.
A licence agreement is designed for people who live in digs-style accommodation, where their landlord shares the house, or in a hotel or hostel. It does not afford the same type of protection tenants are entitled to under residential tenancies legislation.
However, in a statement to The Irish Times, the RTB said it was “important to note that merely labelling something as a license does not mean it is one”.
In Joseph Glackin and Thais Santos’s case against Leevin, the tribunal report found the arrangement in question was a tenancy agreement, rather than a licence agreement, as put forward by Leevin. Not everyone has secured the same result.
Janiedson da Silva dos Santos talks about the stress he endured in the months leading up to his home in Santry being broken into and his belongings removed.
He paid Leevin €655 per month and shared the house with eight other people.
“It was a lot of people. It was a small space. When everyone was at home and needed to cook, it was chaos,” dos Santos says.
He says there were signs of mould in the house, the stove was broken and appliances were not working. When the tenants asked for help, Leevin told them to clean the mould themselves, or otherwise they would be charged a fine.
“Everything for them was fine”, he says. The contract he signed with Leevin, seen by The Irish Times, outlines several scenarios in which tenants could be charged a fine.
Dos Santos says the company fined him and all of the other residents €100 each for not telling Leevin one of the housemates had his girlfriend staying with him.
While he did not know the woman was living there against the rules, and did not feel it was his job to report it, he paid the fine because he was “new to Ireland” and “felt coerced”.
Then in June, some three months before his contract was due to end, Leevin emailed him and all of the other residents saying they would have to move out the following month.
After receiving advice from homeless charity Threshold, dos Santos lodged a complaint with the RTB, which assured him he had a right to remain in his home until that process concluded.
Leevin disagreed with this assessment and told him he had to leave anyway.
Some days later, dos Santos arrived home to “chaos”.
“I had locked my room. They ripped the lock off. They took away my belongings, which were the batteries and my bike that were inside the bedroom. I had just bought food for the week. They took the food.
“The house was totally turned over, it was a chaos. There was a lot of broken things. They had removed furniture. I couldn’t use the bathroom. My room was full of dust and dirt,” he says.
When he told Leevin he had a right to stay in the house, an employee “said it was my fault because I had to leave the house”.
He said he had to return the house key in order to get his bike.
“They used my goods to bargain with me to leave the house,” dos Santos says.
In the end, it worked. He got his bike back and left the house, ending up homeless, couch surfing and failing to recoup his full deposit from Leevin.
“They said they had a charge of €440 euros related to maintenance and cleaning,” Dos Santos says. He has since secured alternative accommodation.
Meanwhile, very little has changed at his former home on Beaumont Road in Dublin.
The Irish Times visited the house on August 2nd and spoke with new residents who confirmed the accommodation was still administered by Leevin.
The rent has increased, with dos Santos’s former room now priced at €900 per month, compared to the €655 he had been paying.
One current resident explained he was a student who had recently moved to Ireland and was paying €550 to share a small bedroom with two other people.
He says none of the residents have ever lived in Ireland before.
“The agency practically just threw us in here,” he says, speaking on condition of anonymity as he still lives in the house.
For Janiedson da Silva dos Santos, he feels the agency just threw them out, and the scars remain.
“It messed up with me a lot. I cried. I felt humiliated. I didn’t sleep well. I even broke my tooth because the stress level was so high, due to [grinding],” he says.
While the RTB has yet to decide on his case, it says it is “illegal to force a tenant out by using threats, cutting off utilities, or changing locks”.
The tenancy body has the power to enforce fines of up to €20,000 if it finds a landlord has evicted a tenant illegally.
Speaking on behalf of Leevin Ireland, Gonzaga responded to questions put to him by The Irish Times.
“We categorically deny any suggestion that Leevin uses intimidation to force residents from their homes,” Gonzaga said in a statement.
Regarding the removal of dos Santos’s bike, and the damage caused by workmen, Gonzaga said the bike was removed “due to fire safety concerns” and that “no belongings were removed as a condition for returning keys”.
“Renovation work carried out at the property was necessary to restore it to minimum living standards following prolonged misuse,” Gonzaga said.
Regarding the use of licence agreements rather than tenancy agreements, Gonzaga said Leevin’s model was “designed to fill a gap” in the Irish rental market and offer “flexible accommodation options tailored to the needs of short and medium-term international students”.
He said “Leevin operates under licence agreements, not tenancy agreements” and that this “complies fully with Irish law”.
