Complainant

Respondent

Parties

Ausra Ziurinskaite

Adrienne Keogh

Representatives

Owen Duggan, Threshold

 Not represented

Act

Complaint Reference No.

Date of Receipt

Complaint seeking adjudication by the Workplace Relations Commission under Section 21 Equal Status Act, 2000

CA-00041848-001

07/01/2021

This is a complaint about discrimination on the housing assistance ground.  Ms Ziurinskaite is eligible for the Housing Assistance Payment, known as “HAP;” however, when she applied to rent an apartment from Ms Keogh, she received a response saying, “Sorry, I am not part of the hap (sic) scheme.”

On October 18th 2020 at 19.12, Ms Ziurinskaite sent an email in reply to an advertisement on Daft.ie for an apartment for rent at 44 Holywell Villas in Swords, County Dublin.  In her application, she said that she was looking for an apartment for herself and her young son and that she was in receipt of the HAP payment.  She told the landlady that she had references from the estate agent renting her current apartment and from her employer.  She said that she would pay the deposit in cash or by bank transfer.  Around 45 minutes later, she received a reply from the Ms Keogh, who indicated that she was not part of the HAP scheme.

Considering that she may have been discriminated against on the housing assistance ground, Ms Ziurinskaite sent a form ES1 to Ms Keogh at the address of the property she had applied to rent.  A copy of the form, dated November 20th 2020, was submitted in evidence at the hearing.  On the form, Ms Ziurinskaite said that she believed she was treated less favourably than others “…because HAP will pay my rent…”  She got no response to the ES1 form and it was returned to her, opened, in January 2021.

In her written submission for the hearing, Ms Keogh said that she genuinely did not know how the HAP process worked.  She said that she thought that HAP was a housing body, and that she had to be registered with HAP to rent the apartment to someone who was eligible.  She said that she didn’t mean that she would not rent her apartment to someone in receipt of housing assistance payments, but simply that she wasn’t registered.  Ms Keogh said that her previous tenants had rented the property for several years, and she wasn’t familiar with HAP and how it works.

Ms Keogh said that she was trying to do the right thing by acknowledging Ms Ziurinskaite’s enquiry about the apartment.  She said that she struggled herself in the past trying to find somewhere to live and that she knows that it’s hard when you’re waiting to hear back from an enquiry.  She said that she could empathise with Ms Ziurinskaite, as she is also a mother.  She said that she has high moral values, and she respects people and brings up her children to respect people.  She said that she doesn’t want Ms Ziurinskaite to think that she didn’t rent the property to her because she was in receipt of HAP.  She thought that because she wasn’t registered, “it was a path that she couldn’t go down.”

In her submission, Ms Keogh said that she is an accidental landlord.  She bought the apartment to live in, and not as an investment.  When the property market collapsed, the apartment was in negative equity and she couldn’t sell it.  At the time that Ms Ziurinskaite applied to rent the apartment, Ms Keogh said that she was trying to rent it quickly to ensure that she could pay the mortgage and all the other expenses.  At the same time, she was trying to support her elderly parents, as her father had only recently been discharged from a rehabilitation hospital, having had a stroke in February 2020 which left him paralysed and using a wheelchair.

Ms Keogh said that she never received the ES1 form which Ms Ziurinskaite sent to the apartment on November 20th 2020.  She doesn’t live in the apartment and the tenant didn’t tell her that there was any post.  The tenants told her that they have ongoing issues with post deliveries in the Holywell area.

In her evidence at the hearing, Ms Keogh said that she “had a whole load of disasters with the apartment.”  She offered it to a prospective tenant who didn’t take it.  Then the roof leaked and it wasn’t repaired until the end of October.  Around that time, she contacted Fingal County Council about the HAP scheme and she was told that an application would take six weeks to process.  She said she couldn’t wait six weeks to get a new tenant.  When I asked her why she contracted Fingal County Council about the HAP scheme, she said, “So many applicants mentioned HAP, I decided to find out about it.”

Concluding her submission, Ms Keogh said that anyone who knows her knows that she would not behave in a discriminatory manner.  She said that she is sorry that her reply to Ms Ziurinskaite’s enquiry on October 8th 2020 made her feel discriminated against.  She reiterated that she did not know how the HAP process works and she didn’t think she could offer the apartment to someone on HAP.  She said that if the situation changed with her current tenant and she had to rent her property again, she would be properly informed.

The Relevant Law

Section 6(1) of the Equal Status Act 2000 prohibits discrimination on the ground of being in receipt of a rent supplement.  This section is to be read in conjunction with Section 3 of the Act which defines “discrimination” in general and specifically defines the new “housing assistance ground.” 

Section 3(1) provides that:

“For the purposes of this Act discrimination shall be taken to occur-

(a) where a person is treated less favourably than another person is, has been or would be treated in a comparable situation on any of the grounds specified in subsection (2) or, if appropriate, subsection (3B), (in this Act referred to as the ‘discriminatory grounds’) which-

(i) exists,

(ii) existed but no longer exists,

(iii) may exist in the future, or

(iv) is imputed to the person concerned.”

Section 3(3B) provides that discrimination in relation providing accommodation is prohibited under all the existing protected grounds and inserts the new housing assistance ground as follows:

“For the purposes of section 6(1)(c), the discriminatory grounds shall (in addition to the grounds specified in subsection (2)) include the ground that as between any two persons, that one is in receipt of rent supplement (within the meaning of section 6(8)), housing assistance (construed in accordance with Part 4 of the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2014) or any payment under the Social Welfare Acts and the other is not (the “housing assistance ground.”)

Consideration of this Complaint

Ms Ziurinskaite’s application to rent the apartment at Holywell Villas was refused because Ms Keogh didn’t consider renting it to a person in receipt of HAP.  Ms Keogh provided explanations for her refusal, but these explanations do not detract from the facts, that she refused to accept a HAP tenant and she rented the apartment to someone not in receipt of HAP.  The HAP scheme has been in place for many years, and I find it difficult to accept that any landlord, even an accidental one, could not easily familiarise herself with how the scheme operates.  I also find it difficult to understand why she made an enquiry with Fingal County Council at the end of October 2020, when this could have been done before she refused to consider Ms Ziurinskaite’s application.

At the hearing, Ms Keogh said that she was informed by someone in Fingal County Council that it would take six weeks to have a HAP application processed.  In her email on October 18th 2020, Ms Ziurinskaite stated that she had the deposit and that she could pay this in cash or by bank transfer.  It was therefore apparent to Ms Keogh that Ms Ziurinskaite had money to cover the deposit and it would not have been difficult to check if she was in fact, eligible for HAP and, as a landlord new to HAP, when the first month’s rent would be paid.

I am satisfied that Ms Keogh did not intend to discriminate against Ms Ziurinskaite.  It is my view however, that, by failing to investigate how the HAP payments work, and by giving the property to a tenant who is not a HAP recipient, she has caused Ms Ziurinskaite to be treated less favourably.  In this way, discrimination has occurred. 

Findings

From the evidence submitted at the hearing, it is apparent to me that Ms Keogh refused to rent a property to Ms Ziurinskaite because of she did not familiarise herself with the process of renting to a HAP applicant.  The intention of the legislation referred to in the previous section is to prevent occurrences of this type and to protect tenants who are in receipt of HAP or who are eligible for HAP. 

I am satisfied that, based on the facts she has set out, Ms Ziurinskaite has established that she has been discriminated against on the housing assistance ground and Ms Keogh has not rebutted this allegation.

In accordance with Section 25(4) of the Equal Status Act, I am satisfied that Ms Ziurinskaite has been discriminated against on the housing assistance ground contrary to Sections 3 and 6 of the Act.   In respect of redress, section 27(2) of the Act has fixed any potential award at €15,000, which is the maximum that may be awarded by the District Court.

Ms Ziurinskaite was eligible for HAP of €1,200 per month.  Considering all the facts, I make an order for compensation to Ms Ziurinskaite of €3,600, equivalent to three months’ HAP payment.

Discrimination, housing assistance ground, HAP