I listened with incredulity to Mike Allen of Focus Ireland responding to the latest homeless figures on RTÉ radio last week. The number of people living in emergency accommodation has crossed 10,000 and is a desperate reflection on society. Many of the people being forced into emergency accommodation are coming from the rental sector. Their landlords are calling them to tell them that they are selling the house and need them to move on.

Focus Ireland and many other agencies and individuals are doing their best to work towards a solution which of course would be zero people requiring emergency accommodation

The rent they have been paying would be much more if they were to look for similar accommodation and beyond their means. That is my reading of the reason why these poor people are left with no other option but to seek State help. And whatever about adults, it is heartbreaking where children are involved. It is heartbreaking to think that they are left with no home, but also, can you imagine the sense of uselessness which parents feel in such scenarios?

Focus Ireland and many other agencies and individuals are doing their best to work towards a solution which of course would be zero people requiring emergency accommodation. Of course there are others who are riding on the homeless crises to make hay for their own political ideologies. You will find them on Twitter.

The reality is that there are landlords getting out because they are losing their shirts owning rental property

But I was surprised when I heard Mike Allen suggest that the Government should put a moratorium on landlords evicting tenants. I would have thought that he had a better handle on the reality.

And the reality is that there are landlords getting out because they are losing their shirts owning rental property. Forget about the large outfits, rental houses and apartments are also owned by people who invested during the boom years. They borrowed when banks were throwing away money like snuff at a wake. The rental properties were bought in good faith but at inflated prices. Their value nose dived into negative equity during the crash, rents dropped and the landlords made up the difference in the mortgage repayments. Those rents are back up now which means that those properties are “washing their own face” again.

There is a big generalisation that all landlords are rich

But atop of the mortgage repayments, there are management fees, maintenance costs, property tax and a huge tax on rental income of over 50%. As house values increased again to anywhere close to positive equity, these small-time investors were – and are – selling up, just about getting their money back or getting the hell out with their fingers burned. Unfortunately, there is a big generalisation that all landlords are rich. The actual name invokes images of wealth and heartlessness. The husband and wife who bought one house to rent out and the billion-euro vulture funds and investment houses buying apartment blocks are all called “landlords”.

So that is why I was surprised that Mike Allen didn’t make the distinction. Why are we always talking about landlords as the big bad wolf when in fact the market is made up of small time ordinary people who are paying through the nose for the privilege? We need rented property so we need small-time landlords, but they are getting out because it isn’t worth it. And they are being replaced by the big corporate operators. That is a elephant in the room crippling the sector and nobody is talking about it.

Summer is here

The GAA championship begins so summer is here. But I worry a little for the football championship. Attendances will be interesting. It seems to have lost its fizz and only gets interesting at the semi-final stage. We will see, but this year will be telling. We have been talking about it for years but a major revamp of the structure of the football calendar will have to happen sooner rather than later.