My landlord is threatening to evict me because of rent arrears, what should I do. Advice seeking!

Yeah your landlord took a chance on a pair of teenagers who were probably straight from school working minimum wage jobs.

You ended up with your electricity cut off and going to mabs to get money for it to be reconnected.......do you see where I'm going with this?

Majority of landlords would prefer not to have this type of tenant!

You said you were glad you didn't have to deal with me as a landlord.

I was replying with the facts as provided by you in this thread,not a personal dig, as to why renting to teenagers would be a risk.

No job I worked as a teenager paid sick leave. My job after college paid 6 months sick leave.

You also have the risk of the house turning into a "party" house.

These are the type of considerations you have to look at when renting a property....it's not all about "feels" and good "vibes" .

It's a business....a very risky business.

I would say the advisor who helped you kindly took it from their own wallet. But there was no policy on it and no practice of it, if anything there was a No Cash policy. I worked with MABS from 2015 to 2021 and it never happened in the offices I worked in (Dublin, Meath, Louth). There had been, in the past, security issues, people turning up looking for cash, hanging around the doors at closing time on dark Winter evenings.

MABS offices can be very small and sparsely staffed and often there were only 2 of us, one of whom could be in a meeting. We referred people to Community Welfare Officers and that was the only line of help for cash handouts. I also worked for Citizens Information and it was the same there. It was for the safety of staff. We regularly had drug user and alcoholics who dropped in looking for cash, maybe years ago their parents had been given cash, but we had signs up everywhere saying "no cash" as the safety of staff was paramount.

These days with accountability and best practice procedures in the workplace, cash is never seen. It would be an issue at Audits too. I was both a Money Advisor and Administrator and there was definitely no accounts with spare cash for handouts. It could have been in the past ,but its all Community Welfare Office responsibility now and this is primarily down to accountability for staff.

So basically, because you were able to rent a place with minimal checks in 2006, this is the same as somebody trying to rent in 2023?

I can think of a few differences between then and now that might have changed how landlords handle these things. A few major differences.

Which doesn't change anything, the rental market in 2011 was a completely different animal to what exists today. I know that first hand.

Ok so you're talking about your experience of the rental sector from over a decade ago.

I'm talking about rental sector in today's market!

I think it would be very hard to find a landlord willing to overlook no references. Those that do are opening themselves up to a massive risk especially when evictions take so long.

With demand so much greater than supply why would they just take someone at face value?

Considering some insurance policies won't cover if house rented to students , renting to teenagers is another massive risk , if they do need to make a claim will the insurance company be abit pedantic on this issue....likely to be an unwelcome headache to landlord so again they'll probably stay clear of this age demographic.

It's all about mitigating the risk.

If you want to rent out a 200-400k asset to someone based on "vibes" knock yourself out.

You did say that. That you later decided to change the details doesn't change what you originally said.

This entire derail is because you want to die on the hill of claiming that in 2023 landlords don't necessarily check references, as if it ever had any relevance to the OP and the situation outlined there.

MABS don’t have any money for customers. Why did you think that?