It’s September 2023, and I have just moved into a student house in Booterstown, a ten-minute walk from UCD. No heating, no hot water and a broken oven, all of which are standard for any dingy digs. I come back to my new home after a date with my boyfriend, neatly arrange my bouquet of flowers in a vase, and place it on my windowsill.
The next day, as I arrive home, I notice a little note under my door. “Please do not place flowers on the windowsill; it will make it look untidy and may ruin the curtains – Landlady”. And thus my war on landlords began.
Whether it’s the absurd prices of sheds split between 5 people, horrifying news stories on the coercion and exploitation of tenants, or last-minute eviction notices, we’ve all heard of the insane and sometimes cruel demands of landlords during this unforgiving housing crisis.
As bleak as the Dublin rental scene has become, it has also, at times, grown quite weird. Some landlord demands remain difficult to categorise as anything other than bizarre. One student writes: “My ex-landlord was an amateur bodybuilder and would regularly commandeer the living room to practice posing. In a show thong. In broad daylight,” said one student.
I decided to collect similar stories from current and former UCD students, and they certainly came through. The accounts ranged from a landlady “allowing her employed adult son to move in after specifying the house as female only”; to being tasked with “listing a landlord’s couches on Facebook Marketplace and sell them for him”; and even being required to “ pay for the hedges to be cut and then pay for the remnants of the hedge to be collected”.
Some rules were mildly irritating; others seemed to stunt the most basic aspects of someone’s life, with accounts such as showering with only cold water to not using the tumble dryer. At some point, the question becomes less about eccentric landlords and more about how much control can be exerted over a tenant’s autonomy. Examples included being told to stop using air conditioning altogether during 36-degree heat in Italy, or being forced to foot the bill for replacing a boiler and heater that were leaking carbon monoxide.
“My landlady had a whole set of rules about anything one could do in the house, which I was supposed to follow in a strict order,” said one student. “If I wanted to take a shower, I had to: first, place the rug on the bathroom floor, second, open the window, third, place the towel on a specific spot on the stairs to dry, etc. She would freak out if I missed any of these. She also wanted my bedroom door to be open at all times so she could check inside. I eventually left because she decided I was draining her finances by taking a shower in the morning and another one before going to bed.”
Another student writes: “A key rule in the house was no consumption or storage of alcohol”, she says, “meaning that daily checks were also made in the kitchen and fridge”.
But what do they think was the difference between an annoying house rule and an unreasonable demand?
“If it’s about respecting people’s privacy, comfort, or the shared space, then I’d say it’s fair. But if it gets too much, becomes one-sided, or starts controlling what someone does in their own life, then I think it’s unreasonable”.
“I think the difference between an annoying house rule and an unreasonable demand is when it feels as though it’s infringing a basic right. For example, when it comes to policing the shower…when it becomes surveillance, like daily inspections, I think that’s when it becomes unreasonable”.
These petty, obsessive demands carry an almost maniacal quality. The constant impulse to mandate routines, enforce limits, and conduct inspections boils down to a need to strip to force tenants to sign their life away alongside their lease. In a sea of sinister landlords demanding far worse, stories like these become our comedic relief. You may not be able to pay your way up to two showers a day, but you can at least have a good story to tell over drinks (just not at YOUR flat).
Anastasia Glushchenko – Contributor