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Showing posts with label Irish housing crisis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Irish housing crisis. Show all posts
Hedley Lamarr ✍ It is with deep disappointment and embarrassment to read that the so-called Republicans Against Anti-Fascists have spray-painted a Housing Executive van in West Belfast with a threatening racist message.

We are all astute enough to know that being against anti-fascists does not necessarily make you a fascist but writing such nasty, racist threats on the side of a van of an organisation in charge of local housing certainly does.

Of course, there is pressure on housing. It's not due to immigration though. It's due to a lack of regulation; little if any protection for tenants; rampant speculation on the housing market where corporations and businesses buy up houses and drive up prices out of reach of families.

There are no rent controls, no limits on how many houses a person/business can buy, no security of tenure.

The unregulated market coupled with the governments, North and South missing their targets of new-builds causes the shortage. Many houses lie empty all over the island. There were 163,000 empty houses (excluding holiday homes) in the Republic of Ireland in 2022. The Irish government missed the target of new-build social housing in 2025 by 15%. In Northern Ireland the new-build target has recently dropped from 3,000 per annum to 2,300.

Google, for example, owns a portfolio of properties that includes Boland's Quay. 37,000 square metres of office, residential and retail space. Don't forget NAMA and the numerous vulture funds ripping the heart out of local communities.

They call themselves Republicans. I'm sure you have Republican racists just as you have Republican drug dealers or Republican sex offenders or Republican touts. Every demographic, including Republicanism, has it's repugnant element. It's how we deal with that element that counts.

Republicanism has a long proud history of internationalism, as far back as the very first Irish Republicans, the United Irishmen. Don't forget Mary-Ann McCracken worked her entire life to help women and the downtrodden. She campaigned tirelessly against slavery. The racists are happy to have cheap goods from all over the planet but wince if a person comes over. The racists value commodities over people.

I'm not going to turn this into a history lesson but would like to remind the racists that the seven signatories to the Proclamation were human rights driven. Way ahead of their time. Cherishing all children of the nation equally. It's doesn't mean children literally but citizens. Equal rights for all. The leaders of the Rising were to the forefront when it came to fighting for women's rights.

Roger Casement was a beacon of human rights and an exemplary Republican.

James Connolly was a firm internationalist, driven by socialism. The fascists on the other hand are driven by hate and ignorance.

Bobby Sands spoke up for many anti-colonial fights in his poem Rhythm of Time.

"It is found in every light of hope,

It knows no bounds nor space

It has risen in red and black and white,

It is there in every race.

 ♜ ♞ ♟

It lies in the hearts of heroes dead,

It screams in tyrants’ eyes,

It has reached the peak of mountains high,

It comes searing ‘cross the skies.

 ♜ ♞ ♟

It lights the dark of this prison cell,

It thunders forth its might,

It is ‘the undauntable thought’, my friend,

That thought that says ‘I’m right!’"

The Irish far-right invited a loyalist bank robber to speak outside the GPO, a member of the UVF, an organisation which took up arms to murder fellow Irish people purely because they were Catholics. An organisation which bombed Dublin and Monaghan. The loyalist in question describes the Irish language as a foreign language. Amadán gan mhaith mar a deirtear.

No demographic can be held to impossibly high standards. No demographic can possibly be immune from criminality. Let the punishment fit the crime. Let perpetrators be held accountable and not the communities from which they come.

There were riots in Ballymena directly after the arrests of two Romanian teenagers accused of rape. I can't remember any riots when a certain unionist politician was accused of rape. This was never about protecting women. It's pure bigotry.

⏩ Hedley Lamarr is a student of the conflict out of which has developed his strong interest in justice.

Pure Bigotry

Guardian ✏ Decades of skewed policy have led to one of Europe’s worst shortages of affordable homes. Now it is being weaponised against refugees.


11-December-2023

Ireland is in a dark place. Riots in Dublin last month exposed to the world the presence of a small, nascent but emboldened far right. 

A complex range of factors underlie this: social media conspiracy theories, toxic masculinity, an ugly underbelly of racism and persistent social and economic inequalities. But the far right is also weaponising a decade-long housing and homelessness crisis that afflicts the entire country and has placed thousands of people in a state of chronic housing stress, anxiety and fear.

The riots did not surprise those of us who have been warning about the rise of racism directed at immigrants. We have seen how the housing crisis is used to whip up hate against newly arriving asylum seekers. It doesn’t much matter to those who attack temporary accommodation centres for refugees that such buildings would never become private homes. Their message is that Ireland is “full” and we should house “our own” first.

The truth, however, is that Ireland’s shortage of affordable housing has not been caused by an increase in numbers of immigrants or refugees, but by 30 years of policies that have left delivery to the property market while decimating social housing. My phone pings daily with messages on social media from people who are losing their home. In the past few days, a disabled woman asked me to share her plea for “immediate accommodation”, as she is being evicted. A worker for Dublin city council is being evicted, but he and his family can’t afford any of the rents on flats they have viewed. He told me: “I clean our streets every day, and I haven’t even a home I can clean for myself.”

Continue reading @ Guardian.

Ireland’s Housing Crisis Is A Disaster For Its People 🔨 And A Gift To Far-Right Fearmongers

Caoimhin O’Muraile ☭ As the 26 County administration continues with its apparent open-door policy towards allowing limitless asylum seekers refuge in Ireland and leave to seek refugee status, matters are beginning to unravel into chaos. 
 

Asylum seekers alongside our own indigenous homeless are finding there is no room in Ireland as they sleep rough on the streets of the Emerald Isle in tents, sleeping bags and, in some cases, just plastic bags. Our own homeless are sleeping in similar conditions. In fact it is probably they who educated the new arrivals in the art of survival as they have been forced to live rough for many years by different governments in the Dail. Various Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and coalition partners have turned their backs on Ireland's homeless many years ago, now they are inviting asylum seekers fleeing war torn countries, particularly Ukraine, as part of the 26 counties “hate the Russians” campaign, with, to a far lesser extent, those from Syria, a few from Yemen, Afghanistan and other troubled regions around the globe only to tell them on arrival, there is no room, find a park bench. 

This is as cruel as it is well intended, you cannot invite a person round for drinks and on their arrival serve up water! If there is no room for any more arrivals, would it not be better to say so rather than fill hearts with false hope, leaving them open to racial attacks, the drug barons, and the elements? The only difference sleeping rough in Ireland to their lands of origins is there are no bombs going off here. The accommodation offered is very similar of late, the street. This open-door policy resulting in more and more bodies sleeping rough on the streets will give the far-right a launching pad which has already happened at places like East Wall in Dublin, turning genuine concerns into racial hate, something the residents never had in mind at the outset. 

The far-right have been to a limited extent successful in their attempts to turn people against the fleeing asylum seekers particularly if they happen to be single males from the African continent. What happens if these disciples of Hitler latch on to “our streets being littered with refugees”, which most are not, they are asylum seekers aiming for refugee status, how long before the fascists capitalise on this tragic situation?

Back in 2015 Angela Merkel in Germany decided to allow in “over one million refugees” from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan into Germany as part of her “open door policy” which caused a backlash from the neo-Nazi Alternative For Deutschland (AFD) party. Many of those who initially welcomed the newcomers to Germany turned violently against them after hearing the hate mongering AFD speeches. Could the same happen here, on top of what has already happened at places like East Wall? Should the government change policy? Should they abandon the “open door” stance and begin limiting or stopping any more asylum seekers entering their jurisdiction? Is it perhaps time to start housing or at least accommodating those already here before inviting any more in? Would bringing in any more desperate people only be cruelly giving them false hope?

When the 26 County administration first set about its laudable acts of charity in line with “Cead Mile Failte” (a hundred thousand welcomes) it was a great act of kindness, admittedly for the government with an ulterior motive, but for the asylum seekers it was heaven. Now, it is turning into a kind of hell, as they jump from the frying pan of their country of origin into the fire of the 26 counties! If the government closes the door they will be accused of racism. If they close the door to all but Ukrainian asylum seekers they will, rightly, be accused of favouritism. If they continue down the present trajectory, they will fill the streets, along with our own unfortunate homeless people, with “foreigners” which will fuel the far-right organisations arguments. A tricky situation, what is the answer?

Well, if the government is really interested in finding a solution to this conundrum they could look back in history to 1919 and the “Democratic Programme of the First Dail” paragraph one. This states unambiguously “we affirm that the right to private property must be subordinated to the public right and welfare”, such an occasion has arisen to “affirm” that right, to make private property ownership “subordinated to the public right and welfare”. If you look around Dublin and other towns and cities the amount of “private property” sitting vacant is phenomenal. Some have been vacant for months, even years so why not take these shops that were, public houses that were, ghost housing estates and take them into public ownership for the “public right and welfare.” It would provide employment for many shopfitters, carpenters, electricians, plasterers, brickies and general labourers in renovating these premises. Some do not need renovation such as the ghost housing estates which are ready for accommodation. I know the present owners will not like this suggestion but they are not really supposed to. What comes first, private ownership of property and the rights which accompany this ownership, or, the rights of people to have somewhere to live both indigenous and newcomer alike? I think it was Thomas Drummond who once said; property ownership has its “obligations as well as its privileges,” as true today as it was then.

All the government has to do is place a “compulsory purchasing order” on all property left idle for three months or more. Start work, where necessary, on renovating using the labour outlined above. Many homeless people both indigenous and asylum seeker are tradesmen themselves and could start helping in this renovation work, earning a living wage, where one day they themselves might live. What a great prospect for somebody who, through no fault of their own, have become homeless either through reasons of war in their lands of origins or sheer bad luck at home here in Ireland, to have the opportunity of developing premises for themselves and those in similar positions to live.

The question is, will the government have the backbone to take this decision? Will they have the balls to take on the property owners through legislation? Or, on the other hand, will they go belly up the moment the rich man frowns in an aggressive manner? They could do it if they wanted to: the question is, do they? The 26 County administration are often boasting their pride, rightly so, in Irish history and fight against oppression so now why not put some of that revolutionary past into modern day practice? I suggest they read and digest the contents of the “Democratic Programme of the First Dail” and think about enacting some of it today, otherwise I see a disaster waiting to happen!

🖼 Caoimhin O’Muraile is Independent Socialist Republican and Marxist.

Open Doors Policy 🚪 Could It Be Time For A Policy Change?

Anthony McIntyre ☠ When Sinn Fein TD Pearse Doherty accused the Taoiseach of making a 'cruel, heartless and calculated decision' to disappear people . . . which of course he didn't because Leo Varadkar hasn't disappeared anybody and Doherty was referring to something entirely different.

I just could not help but think what the Sinn Fein response might be if the same type of question in relation to the Disappeared were to be asked of a potential candidate in the next Presidential election; if the eagerness to call out the cruel, heartless and calculated will vaporise in the rush for political advantage. I think I know the answer. 

What Pearse Doherty was objecting to with every justification in language echoed by Brid Smith of People Before Profit -"dangerous, sad and brutal" - was the Varadkar-led government's decision to side with the landlords against the dispossessed by not extending the eviction ban, thus leaving people traumatised and terrified at the prospect of homelessness.

The charge against the Taoiseach came during a Dail debate on a Sinn Fein motion to halt the slide towards the abyss of homelessness by having the ban extended. Unfortunately the motion failed, leaving us to conclude that for now a majority of TDs still value profiteers over people.

Surprisingly Sinn Fein did not get a bounce in the latest Red C opinion poll. While Fianna Fail and the Greens slipped, Fine Gael increased its rating while Sinn Fein remained steady. This was the moment when the party could have expected to soar ahead but for some reason has not. And with Labour leader Ivana Bacik calling for a “left-led green-red government”, the voter might be left wondering where the green is going to come from. The Greens under Ryan seem destined to repeat their 2011 fall from grace and power.

With that in mind I was quite glad to see Eamon Ryan being given the what for when last Thursday he turned up at an event in Trinity College. Ryan's Green Party with the arrogance of the damned had suspended the one TD who displayed a flash of compassion on the eviction ban and he was not going to be allowed to forget it.  

Ryan faced a barrage of highly charged political accusations in what my wife described as a wackamole strategy - as soon as one young person was pushed down another popped up - by protestors who included members of the Connolly Youth Movement which had previously faced their own eviction from a university campus for having challenged Bertie Ahern.

These young protestors are not blocking roads, or disrupting people's lives. They are not even denying others the right to hear people like Ryan or Ahern: they turn up, make their point and leave. They are risking their current education and future careers in a bid to stop others losing their homes. 

Politically and socially embarrassing for the agents of austerity, the young protestors can expect to find themselves subject to increased surveillance from people they consider foes and insidious endeavours from people they consider friends.   

⏩ Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.

Eviscerating The Evictors

Anthony McIntyre ☠ Last evening's televised exchange between Louise O’Reilly of Sinn Fein and Minister of State Kieran O’Donnell of Fine Gael served up more anger than answers. 

The minister was a wooden one who it seems ended up on Prime Time as a result of a short straw. No one else in government wanted to do it.

O’Reilly was good up to a point, which was when she was asked why her party opposed certain house building projects. There was nothing wrong with her answer – her party objected to public land being handed over to private developers. Anybody who has ever worked for one will realise what drives them – unbridled greed. O’Reilly’s problem is that house building, even by private developers on public land, seems such a good idea in the midst of a chronic housing shortage that few are going to row away from any port in a storm on some ideological ground. People in need prioritise practical homes over an ideological dislike for who builds them.

O’Reilly seemed uncomfortable when answering the question, not because her answer was wrong, but because in today’s climate the public ear is not receptive to what she was saying. When a party fails to raise the level of public consciousness to its own ideational plateau it risks being dragged under by the drowning person it is trying to save.

Sinn Fein might yet come to consider that it is best to park its opposition to private developers building on public land, work on it later when the problems posed by private developers look more stark to the public, and get more people into homes now. In Gramscian terms, the common sense at present is that homes are to be welcomed from wherever they come. Realistically, there is little else Sinn Fein can do given its all consuming desire for office and willingness to jettison all ideological baggage in order to get there. It is simply unwilling to think outside of a framework where capital might be brought under democratic control. 

The threat posed by the current Coalition government and their allies in the landlord class grows by the day. 

Neary 5,000 eviction notices were served on tenants between July and September last summer, new figures from the Residential Tenancies Board have shown.

This means a lot of people facing homelessness, beginning at the start of next month. The cruel irony of wakening up on the first day of April to the government shouting April Fool for trusting us; the landlord is kicking you out with our blessing. 

Citizens in this society should not be exposed by the government they place in office to the voracious appetites of unscrupulous rentiers and landlords determined to put profit before people. A government, whatever its composition, that will stand up to the profiteers rather than evict people at their behest is the bottom line for a just society. 

Our government is not that. The limits of its imagination will not stretch much further than sending Eamon Ryan out to promise new green benches in public parks (not on private land) for the homeless to sleep on. And just to ensure equality before the law the rich will not be arrested for sleeping on them as well.

⏩ Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.

Coalition Deserves Eviction

Anthony McIntyre ☠ It is hard to frame the Coalition government’s decision not to extend the eviction ban as something other than a grievous act of class cruelty.

This is not some crackpot idea floated by Eamon Ryan, but is the agreed policy position of all three party leaders currently leading the government. It is a crass decision, a class decision.

In a society purporting to be democratic, the state should stand up for its citizens. Here the state stood up for the profiteers. Placing – and that is just a start - 2,700 families or residents in the direct line of fire from the modern equivalent of the Pinkerton Agency, acting as the licenced goondas of landlordism, is a substantial assault on citizens. It also contains within it the potential to risk squandering what confidence capital the Coalition has accumulated; a deposit that does not merit the description 'astronomical'. Dr Rory Hearne asks:

How could an Irish Government make this decision knowing the direct impacts on the most vulnerable in our society? I have been highly critical of policy decisions that have prioritised property interests, but this decision is really shocking. Nothing has changed since the moratorium was introduced last October. The housing crisis has actually worsened.

The callous decision comes hard on the heels of a withering critique of government strategy by Social Justice Ireland director, Sean Healy who labelled poverty policy a disgrace.

In recent months, the Coalition has quietly watched as the opinion polls have continued to show a small but steady decline in the popularity of its main rival, Sinn Fein. The distance between the combined strength of the government parties and its populist opposition has been incrementally narrowing. Perhaps the government read too much into this and, emboldened, thought best to strike while the iron was hot and shove the poker up the backside of those most at risk, least able to fight back from tents or homeless shelters, their likely destination if the government gets its way.

It is a strategy fraught with perils. Sinn Fein might not benefit from the kickback due to its own Victory to the Landlords position adopted in Belfast City Council where the party joined ranks with the right wing DUP to block a People Before Profit motion to impose a rent cap.

There is a very real danger that the far right who have been vocal on the housing crisis - seeing in it a blackthorn stick with which to beat refugees and immigrants - will emerge the beneficiaries of Coalition callousness.

When a state robs Poor Peter to pay Plutocratic Paul it is guaranteed the support of the plutocrat. One hand of Irish society has clapped for this proposal - the landlords. We now have a MRI image of the Coalition heart that shows the greed of capital pulsating through the veins and arteries of government. The Coalition, dictated to by the structural logic of capital, could not envisage a way forward that would not leave society and its most vulnerable at the mercy of profiteers and the threat of homelessness.

The problem, an ideological dependency on a historical scourge of the country, landlordism, can be read into the analysis of Sean Healy:

Ireland won’t solve this housing crisis until it increases the provision of social housing in particular on a much larger scale than is currently planned. We have the resources to tackle housing, to tackle healthcare, and to tackle poverty and to do that effectively and within a relatively short timeframe. But the resources are not being committed in that direction.

Informing society that evicting people from their homes is necessary to secure the retention of landlords has all the merits of lowering the age of consent in order to have enough priests able to perform mass.

A scandalous act by a landlord oriented Coalition determined to assuage the greedy and screw the needy.

⏩ Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.

Victory To The Landords

Matt Treacy ✒ The news that An Bord Pleanála has now changed its previous decision so that the 524 private homes to be built on the O’Devaney Gardens site can be sold to institutional investors, commonly referred to as “vulture funds,” is a further indication of the growing power of those funds within the housing sector.


It is also, by the way, an illustration of a combination of incompetency, irrelevance and studied contempt on the part of central government for local authorities such as Dublin City Council which negotiated the deal with Bartra, the development company who successfully challenged the ban on the sale to a “corporate entity” which had been affirmed by Bord Pleanála in September 2021 – but who have now reversed that decision.

The original deal to develop the site was with Bernard McNamara for 100% public and mixed income housing but that collapsed with the financial crisis. Dublin City Council, at a time when SF was the largest party, then negotiated an agreement with Bartra for a mixed private, social housing and affordable housing scenario.

Bartra cleverly played on the state’s unwillingness to commit to buy the 524 units which the developers said they could sell privately, presumably to one of the investment funds. Why Bartra could not have built them and then sold them individually as was first proposed would seem not to have been challenged by Bord Pleanála in its volte face.

We raised this in the context of the increasing role being played by Chinese and other investment funds in the housing sector here. It seemed, and still seems, incredibly naïve that any politicians thought they could prevent that by council motions.

The consequences of builds being sold en masse to investment funds is severe for ordinary families who have now become increasingly desperate – being outbid by vulture funds who are chasing the large profits gained from renting out the houses now placed out of reach of families by the purchasing muscle of institutional investors.

Recent figures from BNP Paribas showed that these cuckoo funds are able to outbid families by a massive premium – by as much as 32% according to the report. pushing families even further away from home ownership, according to a report. Why the government doesn’t act to prevent this remains the unanswered question.

It’s almost a year since Micheál Martin told the Dáil it was “unacceptable” that investment funds were buying up entire housing estates, and the government vowed to take action to prevent this happening. That has come to naught, it seems.

That is of course not to detract from the contemptuous manner in which the state itself through its planning and regulatory structures is ignoring almost all local democratic decisions on these matters if and when they come into conflict with the interests of the major corporate players who are indeed using their financial power to dictate terms regarding the current and future shape of the Irish housing market.

Any state with a genuine commitment to not only putting people into apartments, but in ensuring that housing is part of something more than a “market” with little reference to the society it has responsibility for, would not allow such a crucial sector to be dictated by entities like Bartra. It speaks of a state that couldn’t care less what this place is going to look like in 30 or 50 years time. This we already know.

The obsession with “social housing” on the part of others has meant that the chances of working families being able to buy their own homes was always a minor consideration, including for the parties on Dublin City Council. The one thing the left and the likes of Bartra do share is their contempt for private home ownership. You will be either a tenant of the state or some faceless investment fund.

So, we are now left with a situation where – if the ongoing legal consideration confirms the Bord Pleanála amendment – the 524 units that were supposed to be sold to individual private purchasers will now almost certainly mean that all of those apartments end up in the rental sector – a sector increasingly dominated by the investor/vulture funds.

All of this portends ill for the city and people of Dublin. Even the late Pete St. John would be challenged to find a fitting update for the “grey unyielding concrete” that 40 years ago he saw turning Dublin from a town into a city. Now from a city in any sense of what that ought to be mean as an organic urban community into some dystopian high rise mess.

Matt Treacy has published a number of books including histories of 
the Republican Movement and of the Communist Party of Ireland. 

O’Devaney Gardens ✑ Why Haven’t The Government Acted To Stop Another Victory For Vulture Funds?

Anthony McIntyre ✒ A long time in the making, Prime Time's debate between Darragh O'Brien and Eoin O Broin had been billed as "the Housing Showdown the country was waiting for." 

For those with an eye for the gladiatorial, this massive housing debate had the promise of a night to remember, one of Madison Square proportion. With a long suffering audience primed for fight night the big beasts from the Bruiserweight division who had for long eyed each other to the din of hype, would at last step into the ring and slug it out. 

The problem, if not the solution, was at least crystal clear: 

Over the past two decades, Ireland’s population has increased from 3.6 million to over 5 million. In that time, the number of people living in each household has also decreased – from 4 people in every home to just 2.7 – that means as households have fewer people, we need more homes.

O’Brien held the belt but the pretender to the throne, O Broin, seemed odds-on to strip him of it. Only one outcome seemed possible: with the housing crisis so bad on the holder's watch, the challenger merely had to turn up to claim at least ninety percent of the success. The Sinn Fein housing spokesperson had thrown down the gauntlet on many occasions. Now it was the Toichfaidh Ar La moment - his time had come. The penalty kick awarded by Prime Time need merely be stroked home. The Fianna Fail Housing Minister was supposedly in nets with arms much too short to deal with a well placed shot from the Sinn Fein front bencher. 

It wasn’t to be. If anything the Dublin West TD came off second best. This will have disappointed those desperate for homes and eager to see the government flayed with a Sinn Fein whip. The party had rode to success in the opinion polls in no small part because of its very vocal critique of what it had adroitly and persuasively framed as government inaction. 

It is not that O Broin does not have the arguments. As well briefed on the housing crisis as anyone, with a number of books on the topic to his name, he was more than equipped to tackle what is a gaping deficit in public policy. Yet he seemed way off his game, at times hesitatingly uncertain during the exchange. While his adversary never laid him out on the canvas, O'Brien had O Broin on the ropes often enough to cause jitters in the Sinn Fein corner.

To be sure, it was not the mauling that former party leader Gerry Adams underwent at the hands of  Michael McDowell in a 2007 televised debate. There is a poverty of words to positively describe Adams' understanding of economics, whereas McDowell fired salvo after salvo of dictionaries in the direction of his bleating opponent. O Broin, unlike his former leader, is not ignorant of the subject matter. On the night his was a failing of application which resulted in a points victory for Darragh O’Brien which given the pervasiveness of the housing crisis, he had no right to achieve.

To be fair to O Broin, Professor Tony Fahy in a 2019 review of his book Home: Why Public Housing Is the Answer, observed that. 'Ó Broin comes to the question with policy experience and a left-wing perspective but with no simple solutions.' It is admirable that O Broin sought not to resort to the simple soundbite to explain what is a highly complex problem. Still, it did not see him spared from the merciless use of the same from his Fianna Fail adversary. 

Although O Broin is an impressive performer, and he will surely come again, this was not his night. I headed for bed, feeling that while there is a desire for change within society, it is not a yearning for Tweedleduh to join the circus of Tweedledee and Tweedledum.

⏩ Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.

More Slowdown Than Showdown

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