On Saturday 29th March Eviction Nation was launched at Connolly Books. This report, published by the Community Action Tenants Union, provides analysis of legal and illegal evictions since 2015, based on dispute outcomes published by the Residential Tenancies Board (RTB). The report outlines failures of regulation which allow evictions to take place on a widespread scale.
Photo: Over 60 people gathered in Connolly Books to launch the Eviction Nation report, credit Job van Aken
The CATU eviction database group has been working on the project for over a year and a half, coordinated by Fiadh Tubridy. The project has grown out of years of landlord research conducted by CATU members to defend fellow members against eviction. Two researchers from the Data Stories team, Samuel Mutter and Danielle Hynes, joined the eviction database group in early 2024, contributing alongside those already undertaking the research, including Utrecht University researcher Anushka Dasgupta and independent researcher Michelle Connolly, as well as many others.
Photo: James Corscadden, the software developer who created the topevictors.ie website, discusses the work, credit Danielle Hynes
The project included two key outputs: a website and report. The website launched in late February, and includes an interactive map of all evictions in Ireland recorded within RTB data from 2015-2024, and profiles the landlords responsible for the highest number of evictions, showing their influence on the housing system and the lives of tenants in Ireland as well as the strategies they use to evict tenants, with further detail and analysis provided in the report.
Photo: Printed copies of Eviction Nation for sale at the launch, credit Job van Aken
The website reveals 353 officially recorded illegal evictions between 2015 and 2024, as well as 4,524 eviction orders issued by the RTB – these are ‘legal’ evictions which have come through the RTB disputes process. The analysis of legal evictions was aided by Data Stories team member Oliver Dawkins, who assisted in gathering the RTB data held in individual scanned PDFs, made the documents text-searchable, and used advanced data processing techniques to extract the required information.
A key finding of the research was that both small landlords, who may only own a few properties, and large landlords including corporate real estate investors and Approved Housing Bodies, often evict tenants in pursuit of profit. Small landlords are disproportionately responsible for the violent, sensational types of illegal eviction that occasionally catch media attention, and can give rise to the narrative that it is only ‘a few bad apples’ that mistreat their tenants. However, large landlords are responsible for a growing proportion of total evictions, reflecting the growing consolidation of the rental market in Ireland and the fact that these actors have the knowledge and resources to follow the relatively simple process to evict their tenants legally. While small and large landlords have different ways of dealing with tenants, in both cases their business models can involve eviction.
The less dramatic, and entirely legal evictions are often just as devastating for those forced out of their homes. Ultimately, the strategies of both small and large landlords are motivated by private profit and both are deeply harmful to tenants. Work such as the Eviction Nation report and the landlord database website, collectively undertaken in order to assist tenants to organise and defend against eviction, are essential in challenging the injustice of widespread evictions.
At the launch, data visualisation expert Rudi O’Malley presented work he has created with the data gathered by the CATU eviction database team. The visualisation, named Snakes and Landlords, presents some aspects of the research in a digestible, interactive format, highlighting some of the key findings of the research.
Photo: Rudi O’Malley presents his data visualisation to the delighted crowd, credit Danielle Hynes
Enormous thanks to everyone who contributed to the project, and to those who came on the night and engaged with great discussion, questions and ideas for next steps for the project. Physical copies of the report are available for purchase at Connolly Books, The Library Project and Little Deer Comics, Dublin.