THOUSANDS of middle-class renters who have joined Ireland’s lengthening dole queues are facing a housing crisis because landlords are reluctant to accept government rent supplement payments, the national housing organisation has warned.

The practice of landlords placing ads on websites and in newspapers stating “no rent allowance” or “no social welfare” has been highlighted by Threshold.

It has warned that new claimants will face increasing difficulty in securing accommodation, as the government is ignoring calls to make rent supplement payments more acceptable to landlords and to make it illegal for property owners to discriminate against potential tenants based on their socio-economic status.

Of the 6,051 rental vacancies in Dublin listed on Daft.ie, Ireland’s biggest property website, just 291 apartments, 52 flats, and 257 houses were listed as being available for rent-allowance claimants, according to a spin-off website run by Daft for Threshold.

Daft declined to comment on the matter, saying it was up to landlords and home-seekers to sort out the issue between themselves.

“With the economic situation the way it is, more people are on rent supplement and they are coming to us saying they can’t find accommodation,” said Bob Jordan, chief executive of Threshold. “This is one of our biggest issues now.

“Rent supplement was set up for people like you or I who suddenly find themselves with no money because they’ve lost their job, not for the long-term unemployed who go on the rental accommodation scheme.

“There is a view amongst landlords that it’s better to have a professional working person as a tenant. But with a lot more people becoming unemployed, they shouldn’t rule out guaranteed income from the state in a soft rental market.”

Almost 250,000 people are now claiming the dole. The number of people signing on jumped by 73,178 this August compared with figures for August last year, the biggest annual increase since records began 33 years ago.

Preliminary findings of a survey of landlords on their attitudes towards rent supplement indicate that the main reason they won't accept rent supplement is because it is paid in arrears. Threshold has called on the government on numerous occasions to enable tenants to offer rent payments in advance to put them on a footing with other tenants. They also want an increase in the rent supplement, currently capped at €130 a week for a single person in Dublin.

By December 2007, a report showed that 4,500 rent supplement claimants were living in substandard conditions, often in “damp and vermin-infested” accommodation. Fine Gael said this was due to lack of reform in a system that consigns these tenants to the worst possible accommodation on the market.

“Single people are confined to very poor-quality accommodation that hasn’t been renovated in 40 or 50 years,” Jordan said. “We’re talking about eating and sleeping in one room and sharing a bathroom with neighbours.”

Roisin Shorthall, the Labour Party spokeswoman for social and family affairs, tabled amendments to the Social Welfare and Pensions Bill 2008 in March proposing that rent supplements be paid in advance instead of in arrears.

Irish nationalities account for just 61% of claimants on the means-tested scheme, which costs the government about €400m a year, according to figures obtained by Joan Burton, the Labour party deputy leader. The rent supplement already accounts for about 40% of the country’s rental market, according to Threshold.

The Department of Social and Family Affairs says about 66,000 people are claiming rent supplement, up from about 60,000 last year.

The Equality Authority has recommended to the Department of Justice that it change the legislation to enable people to take a case against landlords if they are discriminated against because of their socio-economic status.

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