Irina Artemjeva, who filed a dispute for alleged unlawful termination of tenancy, says, she has to move around a lot. “It's a very unstable situation.”
Irina Artemjeva is homeless, ricocheting between between different bed and breakfasts, sometimes in different counties, using vouchers provided by her local council.
In March, she filed a case with the Residential Tenancies Board (RTB) for alleged unlawful termination of tenancy, which she says is the reason why she is homeless.
But staff at the RTB have repeatedly said they will close her case if she doesn’t provide an address.
“I am homeless, I’m looking for accommodation,” says Artemjeva. “If I find a room tomorrow in County Sligo, and I have to go there, how will I get post from here?"
“That is a real catch-22,” says Mike Allen, director of advocacy with Focus Ireland. “The very outcome you are complaining about becomes the reason you can’t complain.”
A spokesperson for the RTB says that applicants can request to get most communication through email. But to issue legally binding documents, like a determination order, it needs to have an address, they said.
“ It must currently be served by post at an address where the case party normally lives to ensure the dispute outcomes can be enforced,” says the spokesperson.
But any address Artemjeva provides will not be the place she normally lives, because she is homeless and doesn’t normally live in one place.
Ber Grogan, executive director of Simon Communities of Ireland, says that there is a postal service that homeless people can use if they don’t have an address, but that many people are not aware that it exists.
“You should not be denied a service because you don’t have an address,” says Grogan. “Especially for a service that is accommodation-related.”
After she moved out of her rented apartment in late February, Artemjeva paid for a B&B for the first few nights, she says. But her money ran out, she says, and she ended up sleeping in her car.
Following advocacy from solicitors at the Mercy Law Resource Centre, Westmeath County Council then issued her with the vouchers, she says.
With those, she can book into commercial B&Bs and the council pays. But it means she has to go wherever she can find a spot in a B&B that accepts the vouchers.
That could be in another county, she says. She had to go to Kildare recently, because the B&B she was staying in was booked up. "It's very stressful," she says.
In February, the RTB closed one of her cases because she didn’t respond to a request for payment within three days.
The spokesperson for the RTB said that is its standard process. “RTB processes to ensure timely processing of all dispute cases include a requirement to respond to a payment request within 3 working days,” says the spokesperson.
In exceptional circumstances, if the applicant cannot make the payment, they should contact RTB customer service before the payment deadline passes, he says.
Artemjeva says that there was a technical issue with the RTB’s new payment system. After much tooing and froing, she put in a formal complaint and managed to get the case reopened, she says
RTB staff told Artemjeva that her complaint about an invalid notice of termination was no longer applicable since she had moved out of the property.
“In order to proceed, we need a new address for you,” says the staff member by email. “If we do not hear back from you in five days the case will be closed.”
Artemjeva then asked to change the complaint to alleged unlawful termination of tenancy, she says.
Since then, she has had several emails back and forth over the address issue, she says.
Recently, RTB staff wrote to her saying that if she didn’t provide a postal address by 15 June, they would close the case.
As of Thursday, she says she doesn’t think it has been closed. But she is worried because she says it can be very difficult to open a new case with the RTB if it has already closed one for the same reason.
So later if she has a permanent address, she might not be able to resume the case, she says. “I think that would be impossible to start the case again”, she says.
An Post run a service called Address Point which allows people experiencing homelessness to get post sent to an address and collect it at their local post office.
If they move areas they can change it to a different post office.
Artemjeva says that RTB staff did not tell her that she could get a postal address through the post office.
The RTB staff suggested she provide a friend's address as a "care of" address. “This is necessary to ensure you receive all relevant documentation and updates regarding your case,” says the email.
But Artemjeva says she doesn’t think it's a good idea to send important documents to a friend's address. “It's not a stable solution, maybe I'll go to Sligo one day, then maybe to County Cork,” she says.
It would be better to communicate through phone or email, until she has a real address, she says.
Allen, of Focus Ireland, says that the Address Point service with an Post is good and very flexible, and works well for many people experiencing homelessness.
Artemjeva should have been informed of that option, says Allen. “I’m really surprised that the RTB aren’t aware that An Post do that service,” he says.
The RTB spokesperson said that sometimes, in exceptional circumstances, such as where a case party advises that they are homeless, the RTB may exercise discretion to allow the hearing to proceed without a postal address.
“However, we will still require a postal address to issue the hearing report and Determination Order at the end of the case,” he says.
An applicant can ask a housing charity to represent them and then consent to their postal address being recorded as "care of" their representative, he says.
There could be change coming to the system in the future. "Recent legislative changes introduced the possibility of electronic service for RTB dispute documents," says the spokesperson.
The RTB is currently working with legal advisors on new procedures for an electronic document service that will meet the required standards for proof so as not to compromise the enforceability of RTB Determination Orders, he says.
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