Jim Gavin tenant row shows a generational divide
Jim Gavin withdrew from the race in extraordinary circumstances late on Sunday, doing so amid claims that he had not repaid €3,300 paid in error by a former tenant. Picture: PA
Jim Gavin’s presidential dreams were dashed this week, when it emerged that, as a landlord, he still owed a tenant €3,300, a debt that goes back 16 years.
More than 330,000 households across Ireland (more than one in five) are privately renting their homes, either formally or informally. And many more can still remember life as a tenant. As you can imagine, a generation of renters leads to a lot of landlord encounters, and not all of them are positive.
As I wrote this piece, I asked some friends for their experiences of renting. While we've had good landords (and no doubt there are bad tenants), here's a sample of what came back:
“One landlord wanted to be paid in cash in an envelope under the door, then claimed the envelope was fifty quid short,” said one. “Everyone in the house had the same experience.”
“We had a leak during a big flood and my mattress soaked up most of it over the Christmas break,” another said. “[The landlord] put in a dehumidifier and once it was dry told me it was fine to sleep on. There was a row and the tenancy board was involved.”
A third former renter told me: “I had a landlord try to force us out by starting building work while we were out. I came back to find my room halved and all my stuff tossed.”
So, when Gavin’s behaviour as a landlord came into question, nobody should’ve been surprised when it killed his presidential aspirations.
But there's a distinct generational divide in attitudes to what went down between Gavin and the couple who were renting his house.
Older family members or colleagues will often tell young renters that they worked hard, and saved and saved, and even though “it was shit”, they managed to scrounge up enough money to pay for a house. The older colleague couldn’t understand why the younger coworker didn’t just do the same.
You can see where this is going: Things have changed. The numbers aren’t like for like.
So, when that older colleague was renting in the early 1990s, he could have been paying about €200 a month for a room in Ranelagh, Dublin, to use a real example I found online. You might want to sit down for the next part: The average house price in Ireland in 1990 was €60,000.
Now, that same room to rent in Ranelagh costs €800 a month. And the average cost of a home in Ireland is €370,000 — a hike of over 600%! Wages, meanwhile, have not grown to match: A CSO report found that average weekly earnings in 1996 was €611, climbing by about a third to €894 in 2019.
This is just one example, but it highlights a generational divide in perspective when it comes to home ownership and the rental market.
As the last census found (and quoting the CSO): “The median age of residential property buyers increased from 35 to 39 years between 2010 and 2021.” If you’re waiting until you’re 39 (or older) to buy your first home, that could mean 20 years of renting first — almost enough time to pay off someone else’s mortgage. And then, if you’re lucky enough to get a mortgage, you’re starting at square one in middle age.
Landlords are typically older than the tenants they rent to, which might explain the generational gap in perception of Gavin and his actions. Anecdotally, current or recent renters are not impressed (to put it mildly) with the former candidate. Meanwhile, among some older voters, there have been words of sympathy towards Gavin, painting him as a hardworking pillar of the community who made a simple mistake.
On Monday, Micheál Martin told RTÉ's that “comprehensive due diligence was done” and that the party had asked Gavin if he had any issue with tenants. Gavin said no, suggesting either that he lied, had forgotten about the incident, or that, to him, being overpaid €3,300 by a tenant isn’t a big deal.
At this stage, it’s fair to acknowledge that I know some good and fair landlords. One family friend charges about half the market rate on a house she inherited. Another landlord I know hasn’t raised the rent in years. And one apartment I lived in (with the landlord) for over a year was a genuinely fun and pleasant experience.
However, it’s still easy to see how not returning thousands of euros to its rightful owner is morally wrong and how it galled a huge number of potential voters.
- Joe Griffin is a freelance writer
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