Tenancy termination was the key issue facing private renters that engaged with Threshold last year, according to a new report.
The charity's latest annual report said tenancy termination, usually due to landlords selling their property, remained the largest issue facing private tenants for a sixth consecutive year.
Nearly 39% of queries concerned terminations of tenancy and of those who entered homelessness in 2022, the majority had received a Notice of Termination from their landlord.
The report shows that last year, 455 households entered homeless services and 259 were forced to stay with family and friends (couch surf) when their tenancy could not be protected and they could not secure alternative housing.
The figures were considerably higher than in 2021, when 209 households entered homelessness and 72 were forced to stay with family and friends.
This points to the "significant decline" in the availability of homes to rent and the lack of alternative housing options for people, according to Threshold.
There was a 12% increase in the number of households at risk of homelessness that engaged with the housing charity in 2022.
Of the almost 6,000 "at-risk" cases closed in 2022, just under 4,500 were prevented from entering homeless services.
The charity assisted 18,684 households in 2022, which was a fall from 19,947 in 2021.
However, the number of individual adults that sought its help rose to 39,108 adults last year from 26,176 in 2021.
While a moratorium on evictions was in place from October 2022 until March 2023, many households who had already received a Notice of Termination remained at risk of losing their homes, according to the report.
Threshold CEO John Mark McCafferty said more discussions need to take place in order to move Irish tenancies to become more similar to those in mainland Europe where "people stay in the same tenancy for a large period of their life."
Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland, he said the greatest challenge by far for renters is the prospect of a notice of termination.
