Messages from residents

These letters have been anonymised for the protection of the residents.

1) Hello,

My elderly mother is a widow living on her own in her house on XXXX.
She is 81 years old and has lived at this house since 1978.
On both sides of her house (mid-terrace, town house) there is student accommodation. Both student houses are now fully occupied with students for the summer.

One house has 7 young adults in it and the other has 6 young adults.
During the recent fine weather they’re sitting out in the small front gardens/yards on couches and drinking alcohol – there is no heed paid to Covid-19 social distancing. The high occupancy rates in these houses is also a public health concern.
Most evenings there are many more people visiting these houses carrying slabs of beer. The very loud music then normally starts from approx 8 pm on wards.

My mother would be too intimidated to approach these students to ask them to
turn down the music. I fully support your campaign and I very appreciative of your team’s effort to bring this public health concern to the attention of the media and local community.
I wonder if UCC accommodation dept could be asked to put more pressure on the absentee landlords to reduce the numbers of tenants in their houses so as to reduce the risk of Covid-19 spread?
They should be penalties applied or landlords should de-registered from student accommodation lists if they don’t comply. They also need to take more responsibility for waste management. Wheelie bins are regularly overflowing with lids not down. This leaves to pungent odours and crows picking at the exposed bin bags.
If you would like to speak with me please email me at the above address.

2)
To whom it may concern,

I am a resident of XXXXX. I have been living here for 9 years. I have a long term immune system disorder, which I have suffered from for over 12 years, I have also had a very rare form of cancer in my lung which required a right upper lobectomy (the top third of my right lung has been removed). Our neighbor is an elderly man who has also had a lobectomy for cancer in one of his lungs.

We recently noticed a large number of house parties in the area including one that has been happening for the last 4 nights. Because of the ongoing pandemic we were dismayed to see large numbers of students returning to rented accommodation for no purpose other than to party. We were unsure who to contact about this until we saw an article in the Irish Times. As such I would like to thank you and other residents who are attending the protest yesterday and today. Unfortunately due to my health I would be unable to attend as I find the sunny weather aggravates my condition. You have our full support for this protest and we hope people realise the danger these kind of gatherings could have on the community and our health services.

Seeing people flouting the lockdown rules has been making us both very angry. My uncle died 2 days ago and I was unable to attend his funeral due to the ongoing restrictions. We hope people will be able to see the sacrifices people have made during this time and learn to live within the guidelines themselves. Hopefully your protest will highlight this.

Thank you so much for standing up for our community during this very troubling time.

3)
I am a resident in the College Road area and, like you, over the past few days I found myself dealing with an unusual influx of new neighbours who have been keen on all-day, all-night partying – in the midst of a global pandemic, no less.

I’ve been living here for the past number years and have had a few bad experiences during that time, which I’ve dealt with as an individual, but confronting anti-social behaviour on your own can be quite stressful, not to mention potentially hazardous to one’s health if you are dealing with groups of loutish lads who may be highly intoxicated on drink or drugs. The risk of getting into a physical altercation is heightened in these scenarios and best avoided.

Having grown up in a council estate where the community understood the importance of respecting one another, I know the value of a strong network in dealing with situations such as this, so I’d like to make myself known to the association. It would be great if I was able to perhaps attend some meetings or at the very least have a contact who may be able to help me handle inconsiderate, loud late-night parties or idiotic anti-social behaviour. I work five days a week, so may not always be available, but I’m interested in establishing some new contacts in the area. It would be a small measure of reassurance in dealing with the sort flagrant disregard for others that has been happening over the past few weeks.

Thanks for your time.

4)
Hello and thank you for making a stand against anti social behaviour in the area during this entire pandemic.
I live in XXX,across from XXX with both my parents who are in their late 70’s and cocooning and have had their movements restricted.
We are also having to endure this behaviour non stop over the last number of weeks, I have had to go out at 3 and 4am to pick up bins knocked over by groups, ask people to move on countless times due to excess noise, my father is very ill at present and just returned from hospital after a non covid complaint and needs rest.
Saturday night we had a group of 9 people with a speaker on a pull along trolley have a disco in the middle of the road just down from the back gates of the church while 2 others urinated in doorways, they were both female and it was gone 3am,they were coming from magazine rd, I asked them to move they did but only after I pointed out how many elderly people and families lived within 100 ft either side of where they gathered.
I have been verbally abused countless times over the last few weeks in the early hours of the morning,
i didn’t phone gardai as I didn’t want to add to the work load of the frontline staff and emergency services.
Sunday night we had no choice but to call gardai to move a group on the church grounds at the back of our house, 3 hours of noise. the gardai responded within minutes and have driven into the grounds a few times since, they may not have been in the area if it hadn’t been for you highlighting the issues locally, for that I thank you.

No social distancing is being practiced by these students at any time of the day and it is making a mockery of those of us that are actually adhering to all the guidelines.
while shopping locally they are on top of people while buying alcohol in very large quantities.

I mentioned the bins blocking footpaths full of old rubbish and overflowing with bottles.Even with 350 a week they are not paying to have their rubbish removed. I walked the area 2 days ago and came across numerous bags dumped full of pizza boxes, bottles and cans, I will be contacting city about this in hope they forget to remove stickers from the pizza boxes with the addresses on, I wouldn’t search myself as I would be fearful of cutting myself.I’m horrified by the whole carry on, my father is very sick at present, last night was the first night in a long time I could leave his window open for fresh air.It was your good work that allowed for this, a simple window being left open, a basic human right.

5)

We support your protest. I am the owner of a premises on the XXX and will not allow antisocial behavour to occur. Any breach of rules will lead to eviction. We too had that terrible problem many years ago but to a very large extent we rid ourselves of that scourge. Keep up the good work.

6) Hi,

I along with my 2 housemates have been living on XXXX for a year and a half. I work for the HSE and my housemates are both essential workers. We have been hear during all of lockdown and I work from home at the moment.

I would like you to know that we have called the Gardai on a daily basis regarding XXXXX since last week. I have reached out to each TD for this constituency and I have the landlords number and will contact him regarding his tenants.

If there is anything you would like us to do, we will. We want to live here in peace without the constant noise and disruption.

Thank you

7)
I’m contacting you to offer my strongest support for your ongoing campaign. I attended your protest the other day with my spouse and children and would like to know about any further protests.
I think you are doing a great job and feel that it’s really important to keep the momentum up.

I am lucky enough to be able to work from home and my spouse is a health care worker. Our children are all in primary school and are home schooling. We have experienced the issues you are highlighting first-hand over the last week.

The house next to us was bought by a BTL landlord from outside the city a couple of years ago and renovated from a three bed to what we now gather is a 10-bed house. They have never engaged with us on any level. They brought new tenants in mid-March after the students left. When some of them left last week they came into town on Saturday and filled the house with partying kids: many of whom seem hardly out of their teens.

We’ve been very direct with them about late-night partying, and when confronted they’ve been reasonable. So, we have mercifully been spared the worst excesses others have suffered.

However we’ve seen more than twenty people go in and out of the house in recent days, and even with a bit of give and take, the presence of a large group of loud youths smoking and drinking in the neighbouring garden from morning ‘til night over the weekend has caused us a lot of stress. Our kids have openly admitted that they’ve found it intimidating, and we can see that it has affected their behaviour.

But more than that, the landlord’s disregard for the Covid rules and the tenants’ risk taking behaviour puts us and elderly neighbours, in danger.

8)
Why is no one laying the blame for this debacle where it belongs, with Cork City Council? For years they have left this neighbourhood be destroyed by bad Landlords, watching and doing nothing as family home after family home is bought, doubled in size, often illegally, so that 10 or 12

students can be packed into a house intended for 2 adults and a few kids. These are narrow Victorian terraced houses in narrow victorian parks and streets with scarce on street parking. One butchered house means 10 adults, a minimum of four cars, 5 overflowing bins of unsorted rubbish left to blow around in the wind. Even with the most perfect students in the world, that is neither sustainable nor fair on the remaining residents, who can’t find space for their cars and are knee deep in refuse And worse every morning when they open their front doors.
And there are plenty of bad students, they sit outside on couches, drinking and roaring till all hours. Vomiting and pissing around them.
Bad always drives good out, when the authorities look the other way, as the Guards have always done ”sure they are only students”. One bad house makes life intolerable for the 20 around them, both permanent residents and students alike. Residents have been begging Cork City Council for years to step up, have been submitting plan after plan of concrete proposals to rescue the area, have been ignored every time, either through incompetence or wilful neglect. This area cannot take the density of students in it and UCC should not be allowed open until there is a maximum of 4 occupants per house. Or none at all, since they have proved themselves to be incapable of social distancing or consideration for others. Here comes the next wave of Covid-19.

9)

My family has lived on XXXX for almost five years and issues with the student rental next door have been ongoing. The 2019/20 tenants were the most problematic, they were drunkenly belligerent and intimidating and we had cause to complain twice to UCC in Oct 2019 and again in February 2020 as well as repeatedly contacting the Gardaí and reporting the landlord to the RTB. 
There are other rentals on the road and the landlords of these properties are mostly exemplary – they vet when letting and have model tenants, their premises are well maintained and regularly renovated.
As reported recently in all media it is common knowledge that some landlords in the area have knowingly rented short-lets to ‘students’ effectively creating a ‘party central’ in a normally residential area. I understand that other landlords in the area have acted appropriately with a conscience and refused to let on a short-term basis over the summer.
Late night loud music, no social distancing and the use of gardens, doorways and gateways as a toilet facility and for rubbish/bottles are a common feature in the area. 
I understand the tenants may be disappointed that trips abroad on various adventures cannot go ahead as planned this summer, but that does not entitle them to compromise the safety of a community and abuse the environment. We have all made sacrifices and worked hard to observe protocols and keep the area safe. People have lost their jobs – their lives. It is unconscionable that these people feel entitled to invade a community with a potential cluster bomb of infection that totally undoes the hard work, commitment and restraint dutifully observed by permanent local residents in the course of this lockdown and pandemic. It is equally unconscionable that unscrupulous landlords should facilitate such an invasion.
It is the role of landlords in permitting the circumstances that allow these events take place that needs to be examined and challenged. I would like to see the landlords who rent such properties identified and made accountable to the extent that the law and/or regulatory bodies allow.
I look forward to providing support to the Resident’s Association in any future initiatives.

10) Hi, I want to congratulate you for trying to get justice for the local residents. We joined your protest in the June weekend. As you have said since, things have got worse.
I wrote to 15 city councillors in June about the situation. Three councillors got back to me agreeing with me but offered little by way of a solution. I also contacted the guards with no response.
We live in XXX, College Road. The house next door to us is let out to students. They are coming and going all week. They have had a number of late night and early morning parties over the last few weeks. We rang the landlord at 5.20am yesterday morning.They turned off the music but we shouldn’t have to deal with that.

My dad of 82years lives here too. It makes him so mad to see these students and landlords getting away with this behaviour.
Surely Micheal Martin, Michael McGrath and Simon Coveney should sit up and take note of this situation particularly as they will be depending on the residents of this area to help them get re-elected after the next election.

It’s really annoying to hear the mantra ‘we’re all in it together’ when there is very little by way of support in dealing with this.

Thank you again for all of your efforts.  They are greatly appreciated.

Comments are closed.