Michelle Bennett (54) finds it difficult to even talk about her situation as a middle-aged renter, because it has caused her “huge distress”, she says. “It has lost me lots of years of my life.”
As Ireland remains firmly in the grip of a housing and rent crisis, recent figures from Daft.ie indicating that average asking rents are now twice what they were at the peak of the Celtic Tiger period won’t have provided any sense of hope to young adults still sleeping in their childhood bedrooms, unable to move out of their family homes.
But neither will it have given any encouragement to those like Bennett, who, in middle age and not through choice, find themselves locked out of home-ownership, coping with rising rents and an uncertain future. Such people are often overlooked in this conversation, left dealing with their own significant worries and, as some explain, a very different stigma.
“It has taken a toll on my health,” Bennett says. “I have tried lots of avenues to secure something and I’d say I’ve spent the guts of seven or eight years trying to find a way out of my situation.”
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Bennett is a divorced mother of three. She works part-time and has, she says, a low income. She was a home-owner, but following her divorce she and her children had to find somewhere else to live. She lives on Dublin’s southside and has been on the housing list for 10 years, she says. Her situation is further complicated by the fact her name is still attached to her former home, which is in a negative equity position.
Trying “to stay housed, or look for housing”, has been “torturous”, Bennett says. “I worry about it every other day. I worry about whether I’m going to be told I need to leave this house.” She worries about money and making her payments. “Money can be tight,” she says.
She is concerned about the future. Having had a parent develop dementia in their late 50s, she’s terrified about what would happen if she found herself in a similar situation. “I know the energy and determination it takes to get places in a renting world, and it’s no joyride. From the minute I became homeless it has been a challenge.”
As a renter, Bennett says “you’re vulnerable, because you’re at the mercy of the owner … It’s scary, because you can be just given three months’ notice. And the ordeal of trying to find a property... To find the one I’m in took me three years.”
She worries about how she’ll afford to continue renting into the future. “I don’t really have any pension, or anything like that. I can’t afford to have health cover… It’s humiliating a lot of the time.
“I’m absolutely delighted that I have a roof over my head, but I’m always saying that I won’t do anything to this place, because how long will I be here for?” The constant worry has “hijacked” Bennett’s brain, she says, “trying to figure a way out”.
Bennett says she never imagined herself renting “at this stage” of her life. “Not having the security of something long-term is soul-destroying… At this age, unless I won the Lotto, how would I afford anything?”
She doesn’t believe enough is being done to support middle-aged renters. “I think we’re a forgotten minority, to be honest. Because people think you should have your sh*t together.” It can bring a sense of embarrassment, she says. “It’s almost like a shameful situation, because you say, how did you let that happen?”
According to the 2022 census, 36 was the age at which more than half of householders owned their home, with or without a mortgage or loan. The age marking the changeover from renting to home-ownership has been increasing over time. In 2002, it was 27.
Meanwhile, Sarah Breslin (55), in Co Kildare, describes the situation for middle-aged renters as “a ticking time bomb”.
“We had a house and a mortgage… In 2008, we were in the process of actually selling the house. We went from the property being valued at over €700,000 to... having to sell for €260,000.” Breslin said she managed to clear her mortgage, but was left with little else.
Both Breslin, who is a colonic therapist, and her husband were self-employed at the time. And, with her husband working in banking as the economic crash hit, the two found themselves feeling the pressure. “We struggled on for a couple of years,” she explains, before they decided to move to Spain, where they rented. Following the death of Breslin’s mother in 2014, the couple returned to Ireland.
“We’ve been renting ever since,” she says. “When we moved back… my husband was in his mid-50s and I was in my 40s, so we weren’t ever going to be candidates for a mortgage without a massive deposit... Now my husband is 65 and I’m 55, so there’s just no options.
“Unless I win the Lotto, or a big lump of cash comes my way out of the blue, there’s no way I could see that we could own a house. And you’re reluctant to put yourself on the housing list, because we personally think, ‘We’re okay. We can manage’. We have options at the minute, so you don’t want to be taking a house from a family or somebody who’s in a worse situation. But literally there’s no plan for us. We really don’t know how it’s going to pan out. It’s basically work as long as you can and see what happens.”
The uncertainty is unnerving, she admits. “There’s also the fact that we have to pray to God that the landlord… doesn’t end up having to make arrangements to sell this house.
“We’ve been really blessed that the rent has been kept at a reasonable rate, but if we were going into the marketplace now, there’s absolutely no way we could pay those rents. No way.”
She “absolutely [did] not” expect to find herself in this position at their age. “You just have to make peace with it in a way, because otherwise you would be getting very stressed.
“Our focus now is just making sure that our daughter has options going forward. Mostly it’s saving for college… making sure there’s money when the time comes. It’s not like you have any assets to hand on to her, so you have to make the most of what you can do in the meantime.
“Even for ourselves. If it came to it that one of us needed to go into a nursing home, there’s no Fair Deal [care arrangement] to be done, because there’s no house.
“There’s a lot of people in this scenario. It’s just invisible.”
Bruno Batista (45), originally from Portugal, has been living in Ireland for almost 19 years.
Growing up in Portugal, renting was a normal part of life, he explains. “When I moved here in late 2006, one of my first conversations, in a pub, was someone asking me ‘When are you buying a house?’”
“Back then, I thought that was stupid. I’m not going to the bank and getting a loan. Now I’m thinking maybe I should have. I’d be owing a bit of money, but I’d have my house now.”
The people he knows who can buy a house “are normally either getting money from their parents, or living with their parents for a number of years until they can get enough money for deposits”. With his family back in Portugal, that has never been an option. “I never was able to save money because I was always paying full rent. And the banks are not taking into consideration… that I’ve paid thousands and thousands of euros through the years. It’s not a thing I can show to the bank and say ‘Look. I’m good for whatever’.”
He finds the preference for houses over apartments in Ireland unusual. “Driving around Dublin, and it’s all estates. And that’s such wasted space. I think people in Ireland have such a bad idea about apartment buildings because of Ballymun. That was a big emphasis of a lot of my conversations, especially in earlier days, with people [saying] ‘No. The Ballymun apartments. They’re awful’. And it’s a thing that we need, in this country, to be able to put people up. It’s ridiculous that there’s not a big emphasis on building estates of apartment blocks.”
Batista has moved to Sligo in recent months with his partner. Things are no better there in terms of rent options, he explains. He doesn’t see any hope that he and his partner will ever be able to buy a house. “Unless there’s a EuroMillions somewhere. Or someone dies out of nowhere and leaves us a lot of money, which is not going to happen. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I’ll never be able to buy a house unless a miracle happens. I don’t even want a house. All I want is a little plot where I can put one of those pre-built houses for two people – I’d be happy with that.
“I know I’m 45, but I’m in the same situation as a 20-year-old who’s renting. If something happens tomorrow and the owners decide to sell, I’ll have to find a place. And if there’s nowhere to go to, I’ll be relying on friends’ charity and somewhere to sleep for a couple of weeks. There’s no safety net for anyone, be they young or old. There is the idea that only the young ones are in this. They’re only the ones suffering. [But] everyone is suffering.
“I’m a 45-year-old person who has been working my entire life. I should not be in such a situation. I’m not saying there’s some sort of God-given right for me to have a house, but the market is bananas. It’s impossible to find anything anywhere.”
Abigail* is 50 and renting. It’s a source of deep shame for her. She lives in a rented house with her husband and children in south Dublin.
“We always rented,” she says. “Trying to save for a deposit, while we’re renting, has been virtually impossible. We have a deposit saved now, but the house prices… are just unattainable for us.
You shouldn’t be looking at your parents thinking ‘When you die, I’ll be able to buy a house’. I shouldn’t be thinking like that
— Abigail, renter
“We’ve moved loads. As the family grew bigger, we moved. We weren’t eligible for social housing. We both earned too much, but we didn’t earn enough to buy a house,” she continues. “I wouldn’t dare tell the mothers in the school that I rent, or anything like that. I’d find it so hard.” She worries she’d be judged if they knew. “[I’d feel] they’re looking at me as if I’m different. Even though we’re probably paying twice what their mortgage is in rent, I still feel I have to hide it constantly.”
Abigail is from the area she lives in and doesn’t want to move to another part of Dublin or a different county, as her children are settled in school. She lives in fear of being asked to leave her rental property, however. “It has happened. We’ve had to move. We were in a house for 10 years and we got six months’ notice [to leave]. And when I say it devastated our kids, it devastated them. Because they didn’t know we were renting.”
She explains the sense of shame that comes from feeling like she “never achieved… We never got that house that we wanted. Or any house. My family have all succeeded. I’m still catching up with them. I feel like I never fit in, because I haven’t got that house.”
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Because of the relative affluence of the area, Abigail feels the “perfect” house, garden and car is “constantly flashed in our face. You haven’t got it. You haven’t made it. We just constantly feel like we’ve failed our kids. Even though we haven’t, we feel we have.”
Not being able to afford your own home “is an awful stigma”, she says. She’s heard family members, without thinking, criticise their own neighbours by describing them as “bloody renters”. “Is that what people think of renters? That we’re just party-goers who leave the house in complete disarray?”
She’s experienced similar attitudes herself where she feels neighbours “just look at us as if we’re scumbags or something”. She finds herself worrying about what would become of her children if something was to happen to her and her husband. “Because I don’t have security,” she explains.
Abigail admits that part of her “is waiting for an inheritance… That’s awful. You shouldn’t be looking at your parents thinking ‘When you die, I’ll be able to buy a house’. I shouldn’t be thinking like that. I’m angry then at society, and I’m angry at the Government for making me feel like that.”
Prof Cathal McCrory, co-principal investigator of Tilda, the Irish longitudinal study on ageing, understands the stigma and shame some middle-aged people may feel about renting. “What you have is relative to their peers’, or even... parents’ generation,” he says. But he believes these feelings are misplaced.
“What we seem to have done is shift that shame onto an individual,” he says. “There was an expectation in the past that if you had a job, if you saved, if you worked, that home-ownership would not be out of your reach... That’s not a personal failing. That’s a structural failing. That’s a systemic failing. That’s a political failing.”
He understands why people may not want to move from the areas where they’re living. “There is a distinction between a house and a home. A house is four walls and a roof over your head. A home is somewhere you belong.
“What you need [is] for people to feel that they live in a home as opposed to a house, is you need to be integrated into the community... you need amenities.
“Lots of people have grown up in areas that they’re attached to because they’re integrated within their community... The Government are very interested in initiatives for people to age in place. And this is the idea, as people get older, to ensure we design communities through both the built infrastructure, but also the social infrastructure, for people to live in communities and keep them out of care homes and keep them out of hospitals.
“The idea of fragmenting all of those social relationships, bonds that they have built, sense of belonging in the community – I think that’s what’s being eroded when people have to move.”
The increasing age of renters is storing up massive challenges for the future, he says. In the past “at least when you reached retirement age, you had security of tenure. What we’re going to have into the future is... proportions of individuals who don’t own their own homes; who are going to be reliant on either State provision into the future, or there are probably going to be more frequent moves between tenancies. That’s my fear, and I’m not sure the State is equipped for that.
“There’s an economic cost,” he adds pointing to the State needing to provide more housing or financial assistance, as, “When people retire, they don’t necessarily have the income.
“That’s a problem in the future, but individuals shouldn’t be living it as their problem.”
*Name has been changed
