Domestic abuse victims who flee the social housing they shared with a perpetrator are deemed to have “voluntarily” surrendered their tenancy and may have to wait for up to three years for new accommodation.
In one case, a survivor of domestic abuse sought a judicial review against Tipperary County Council after being told she would have to wait a year for social housing as she had surrendered a tenancy with a long-term partner.
“Louise”, who spoke to The Irish Times on condition of anonymity, said she had left that property because of escalating domestic abuse from her partner.
Mercy Law Resource Centre, a free legal aid charity that supports people in the areas of social housing and homelessness, said it had seen cases where survivors of domestic abuse had been obliged to give up a tenancy that they shared with an abuser before they could seek independent social housing.
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It said some local authorities would then apply a penalty which excluded the abuse survivors from accessing social housing for a specific period as they had “voluntarily surrendered” their former tenancy.
[ ‘I was so terrified’: How domestic abuse victims are becoming homeless ]
Kate Heffernan, a solicitor at MLRC, said this wait could vary from 12 months to three years before the person was allowed to access social housing again.
“The consequences are, ‘We’re now not going to consider you for a new social house for a certain period of time’,” she said.
“Each local authority has their own allocation scheme, so it’s their own internal rules on this. So some of them will say you’re not going to be considered for three years. Some will say 12 months.
“It’s really variable, and it’s a complete lack of consistency across the country in relation to how people are being treated if they do feel forced to surrender property where they’ve been abused.”
In early 2024 Louise left a social house where she had been living for six years, leaving a “terrifying” relationship which she had been in for 20 years. In total, she had been a social housing tenant for 14 years.
As a domestic abuse survivor, she stayed in a refuge initially in Limerick and then in another domestic abuse shelter in Kilkenny for three months. There was no space in refuges in Tipperary. She then got a place in a B&B, which was being contracted to provide emergency accommodation for homeless people by Tipperary County Council.
According to the judicial review that she took against the council, Louise tried to seek social housing on her own, but was told by Tipperary County Council she would have to surrender her old tenancy before she could be considered.
But once Louise did, she was told she would not be considered for social housing for a year on the grounds that she had “voluntarily” surrendered her tenancy.
A council spokeswoman confirmed “a judicial review was sought and initiated” in Louise’s case, “but when details around the case were discussed between both parties’ legal representatives the request for a judicial review was subsequently withdrawn”.
Louise’s legal team said the local authority settled and agreed to offer her social housing on her own.
The council said it could not comment on specific cases, but said that “given the current climate, the local authority must carefully manage its housing stock”.
It said that when people surrendered social housing tenancies without “any mitigating circumstances” they could face a penalty of a three-year wait before accessing social housing again, which is reduced to a year in cases of “marriage dissolution”.
“It is impossible in any scheme to mitigate for all the possible circumstances that may require consideration as an exception to the three years’ suspension, and instead there is an appeals mechanism clearly advised to the applicant to enable such cases to be considered and these would be considered under the grounds of exceptional and compassionate mitigating circumstances,” a spokeswoman said.
