Paul Howard
Linked to 1 company - Connect Centre Limited and 3 businesses - Ph Builders, Key Investments (Turkey) and Paul Howard And Una McClean.
Paul Howard is a cartoonishly horrible landlord. If a screenwriter put him in a film as-is, they’d be criticised for being too on the nose for leaning on stereotypes of manipulative, money-hungry, tax-shy slumlords.
But he is, in fact, a real person, and one whose deeds have been written about extensively over the past 8 years, both by the press and by grassroots housing activist groups in Dublin.
A tiler by trade, long involved with construction, Howard has been exploiting tenants for over 15 years
In 2009, someone - presumably a former tenant - was upset enough with him to anonymously report him to Revenue for tax evasion, as he insisted that rent was to be paid in cash only:
"The rent payments are made by two methods… The tenants leave the collective rent in an envelope in their respective apartments in the kitchen and Mr Howard lets himself in at the start of each month and personally picks it up, usually when the tenants are not present. The second method, which some tenants use, is to go directly to Mr Howard’s business, Clean City on Talbot Street, on the first of every month and hand the rent in directly to the employee at the counter."
Several other tenants have since corroborated this cash-only setup.
Landlord Paul Howard told Revenue he kept rent money at home in cash - Irish Times (archive version)
In 2016, tenants living in one of Howards properties in Tallaght, Co. Dublin were told the only payment option was to bring the rent directly to his Clean City Launderette every month - despite this launderette being almost an hour’s journey from the property they rented.
These Tallaght tenants were illegally evicted by Paul Howard after they refused to consent to a coin-meter electricity box being installed. As reported by the Slumleaks blog, he gave the tenants 3 days’ notice to leave:
"he threatened… that if we would not move out, he would bring his family and friends to pack our stuff and put it on the street on Tuesday the 3rd of May (3 days later)""
Paul Howard and the RTB - Slumleaks
Other tenants in Mountjoy Square explained how they were being ripped off by the electricity coin meter box:
"We asked the landlord to show us an electricity bill, as we wanted to check if we’re paying the right amount. The bill was about €110 and we had put about €200 in the machine. We asked him why there was such a difference, he said he would fix it but he never did. We proposed to him that we’d directly pay for electricity with the bill, but he refused. The coin machine is not a very good system. When it runs out of credit the fridge and freezer turn off and all our food can be ruined."
Paul Howard: Tenant Stories #1 - Slumleaks
Paul Howard is also known for paying unannounced visits to his tenants - something that is illegal under tenancy law. Some examples of testimonies include:
"He will enter the flat without notifying us. He’ll knock on the door. If we don’t respond, because we don’t want to let him in, he’ll let himself in. We emailed him asking him to notify us when he was coming, but he ignored that.""
"He told us if we didn’t leave our bedrooms unlocked when he came to the property, he would break the doors open and take the cost from our deposit"
"I told the landlord he cannot come into the flat without telling us. He said “if you don’t like that you can come outside and fight me like a man” – I ignored this."
Fraudulent cheques are another Paul Howard trademark: at least two of his former tenants have been given useless fake cheques by him when they asked for their deposits back after moving out.
Is Paul Howard a Freeman? - Slumleaks
Several tenants have taken cases against Howard at the RTB. The RTB invariably rules in the tenant’s favour, as he shows such a disregard for tenancy law. He owes various former tenants €24,757 in damages that the RTB has ordered him to pay. In 2020, a journalist asked him if he had paid the tenants these damages. His only response was "my solicitor is in negotiation with them."
Howard’s use of intimidation and force on his tenants reached new levels in late 2017-early 2018. 6 tenants sharing a flat on Mountjoy Square refused to pay him a rent increase that was well over the 4% limit that was legally permitted at the time. “When we told him he was not allowed to increase by more than 4 per cent he gave us three days to move out.”
The tenants filed RTB cases, but before these cases could be heard, Howard removed all their belongings from the flat while they were out, then cut off electricity in the flat. When tenants tried to get back into the property, he brought several men with him to intimidate them. Thankfully they were eventually able to regain access.
Tenants whose landlord tried to evict them welcome injunction - Irish Times (archive version)
The RTB then took the unusual step of getting an injunction against Howard, forbidding him from entering or interfering with the property until the cases were heard.
He also told the tenants “he would not recognise the RTB” - something that will surprise nobody who’s read this far into his profile.
Several weeks later, Howard and about 10 other men came to the flat, broke down the door and violently evicted the people inside. A neighbour said: "We were in bed and we heard a load of banging, it was like a sledgehammer banging off something. Then there was a load of commotion and the tenants were all outside in the hallway in their pyjamas after being dragged out".
This was a new level of aggro, even for Paul Howard. It turns out this was because he was in trouble with the banks. Howard and his partner Una McClean owed the bank €1.4 million between them. A receiver had been appointed on some of his properties shortly before he’d sent the tenants their eviction notice. Rather than let the receiver take control of the property and start collecting rent, he had decided to evict the tenants. The receiver in this case was none other than another of our Top Evictors, Mr Ken Fennell.
Ken Fennell - Landlord Database
Since 2018, there have been many reports of Howard and McClean’s tangle with Revenue, recounting their “property empire in Ireland, his investments in cryptocurrencies, his use of a launderette as a collection point for rents in cash, his various interests in Turkey and the alleged steps he has taken to “dissipate” assets in extraordinary detail”.
An empire built on cash: How a secret millionaire got tangled in Revenue’s web - The Currency
Most recently, Revenue demanded €1.2 million off him in unpaid tax, and on top of that interest of €1.1million for non-payment, while his partner Una McClean owes €300,000 plus interest of “almost €300,000”.
Dublin landlord Paul Howard hit with tax penalty of more than €1m - Irish Times (archive version)
These reports all make for entertaining reading for anyone who’s seen the havoc he’s inflicted on his various tenants over the years. When he was asked to show Revenue evidence of him lodging the rent he earned into his bank accounts, Howard replied “well sure, I had plenty of money in my account, I probably didn’t need to put more in, as you see, I kept the cash in my house, or whatever."
But schadenfreude aside, is this justice for the tenants he exploited and terrorised over the years?
Sadly Paul Howard is not unique. In reality individual private landlords behave horrendously towards their tenants all the time. As extensively documented by the CATU eviction database project, there are many other similar landlords out there busily evicting and exploiting their tenants through both legal and illegal means.
This is one just one case where a landlord happened to “get caught” because a few of his tenants were able to report him, or to seek support from others and the colourful nature of his misdeeds happened to capture the attention of the media and Revenue.