Partisan • Patriotic • Internationalist
Government housing policy is the cause of the housing crisis. Homelessness, waiting-lists and extortionate private rent levels are the symptoms. Universally accessible public housing is the cure, the solution, to permanently end the housing crisis. Government housing policy works very well for those it is designed to benefit: the speculators, […]
At the beginning of September the coalition government published its long-awaited final, final, final housing strategy, “Housing for All,” to solve the deepening housing crisis. Thousands are on local authority housing lists, and tens of thousands are trapped in rising rents which are completely unsustainable from the renter’s point of […]
Continuing with the analogy established in the preceding article, we can think of the specific structure of capitalism as resting on three pillars: civil society, foreign capital, and domestic capital. If we think through this heuristic model we begin to realise the enormity of the task, but conversely we also […]
A house is not just a building made of bricks and concrete: it’s a nest made of dreams and memories. When such a place crumbles in front of one’s eyes it is heartbreaking. Approximately five thousand families have faced the heartbreak because of the mica issue, which caused cracks in […]
The crisis in housing is official Government policy. It is not an unintended consequence. The profit margins of the various corporate property funds that have entered the Irish housing market since 2013 require a crisis, in the supply of both public housing and affordable housing for purchase, leading to a […]
The mantra “You need to own your own house” or to “get on the property ladder” has great appeal in the Irish psyche. Young couples will queue outside building sites for days to get their “dream home.” While they wait, and it makes the evening news, the original price of […]
Housing policy in both jurisdictions in Ireland has failed the citizens abysmally. One of the sources of communal revolt in the North was the unfair distribution of housing. As only ratepayers and their spouses had a vote in local elections, priority in housing was given to the unionist community, to allow them to control the councils.
In 2019 there were 37,859 applicants on the social housing list in the north of Ireland. 26,387 of those were deemed to be in priority need of housing, described as housing stress; 74 per cent of those were considered officially homeless. These grim statistics are compounded by the fact that […]
The Community Action Tenants’ Union (CATU) is Ireland’s only union organised within the community you are living in—in the same way that a trade union branch is based within a workplace. CATU members come together to combat not only issues concerning tenancy but anything that affects the whole community, such […]
The efforts to form a “government of the willing” following the general election earlier this year rumble on. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have had to pretend to dance and engage in a courting ritual to give the impression that there are significant ideological and political differences between them, thereby requiring such a long period to produce a draft programme for government. Fianna Fáil are desperate to get into government at any cost in order to re-establish a presence in urban areas.
But what drives the state and these two main parties of the establishment is the need to thwart the desire of working people for real, meaningful change, as
Covid-19 and the global economy – Ewan MacDonaldDownload Is coronavirus the problem? Over the course of the next few years we will hear the same excuse over and over again. The social and economic crises we are experiencing the first moments of will be levelled at the feet of the […]
Class solidarity, not social partnership – Jimmy DoranDownload The trade union movement must not compromise on “social partnership” after this pandemic is over. It is not our class that must compromise but the ruling class, as the failure of capitalism has been exposed beyond all doubt as a result of […]
Eoin Ó Broin, Home: Why Public Housing Is the Answer (Dublin: Merrion Press, 2020). Much like its author, Sinn Féin’s spokesperson on housing, Home is a very nice and pleasant book. However, given the context of an ever-increasing homelessness crisis, it falls short of providing a truly transformative solution to […]
On the night of the census in 2016 there were 429 homeless students in Ireland, making up over 8 per cent of the total homeless numbers. When the Government’s student accommodation strategy was launched in July 2017 there was an excess demand in purpose-built student accommodation (PBSA) of over 23,000 […]
Vulture funds have become passé. The latest fad taking hold in the property market is the cuckoo fund—aptly named, as they push the individual or family buyer out of their potential nest.
Last month we saw the largest housing demonstration in Dublin so far, under the banner of Raise the Roof, as more than 20,000 citizens took to the streets. This campaign, launched by the ICTU, is going from strength to strength as the trade union movement takes the lead, uniting with […]