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9 - The Lost Decade of Social and Affordable Housing: Austerity and Marketisation
- Rory Hearne, Maynooth University, Ireland
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- Housing Shock
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Summary
The continuing homelessness crisis reflects the failure of Ireland's social housing policy over the past twenty five years to ensure an adequate supply of appropriate and secure accommodation for the various types of households in need. At the same time there has been an increasing reliance on procuring social housing by subsidising an insecure private rented sector. (McVerry et al, 2017: 9)
Austerity and marketisation in social housing
In her book The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein (2007) shows how, at times of major crises, neoliberal governments implement policies that would not be tolerated by the public in ‘normal’ times. Such ‘shock doctrine’ policies were evident in Ireland during the global economic crisis of 2008 and subsequent austerity period. The Fianna Fáil-led government of 2008–11 implemented austerity in order to bail out the collapsing financial institutions and enforce the cost of recession, adjustment and financial losses on to the state, public services and the public. Both that government and the subsequent Fine Gael–Labour government (2011–16), implemented austerity measures involving cumulative cuts to public spending and social welfare, and raised taxes of over €30 billion (over 20% of Ireland's gross domestic product). The social housing capital investment budget (the budget for building new social housing stock) suffered the second-highest proportionate budget reduction of any area of public spending during this period. It was reduced by 88% from €1.46 billion in 2008 to €167 million in 2014 (Byrne and Norris, 2017). This reflected the government, state and political bias against social housing investment and the placement of the largest burden of austerity on to the most vulnerable (including young people, those with disabilities, lone parents, disadvantaged communities and low-income households, all of whom suffered huge cuts to welfare and supports during austerity with consequent detrimental impacts on their housing situations). Table 9.1 shows the effective cessation of the social housing building programme in Ireland during the austerity period. This resulted in a ‘lost decade’ of social housing provision. This is one of the main reasons the Irish housing system suffered such a major shock with the emergence of a new homelessness crisis in 2013.
References
- Rory Hearne, Maynooth University, Ireland
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6 - The Neoliberal Roots of the Current Crisis
- Rory Hearne, Maynooth University, Ireland
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Housing crises are not new
Ireland is an interesting case through which to understand housing, because of its particular history. It shows that housing crises are not new, nor are they universal, either within countries or across different countries. There were severe housing shortages due to rapid urbanisation and inequalities in the late 19th and first half of the 20th century. For example, Dublin and other Irish cities had some of the worst slum housing conditions in Europe in the early part of the 19th century. This was due to the lack of an independent government, the disinterest of the British colonial administration in providing housing for the Catholic majority in Ireland, discrimination against the Catholic population, and growing urban poverty and social class inequalities. In 1914, a local government committee tasked with investigating the living conditions of Dublin families with the lowest incomes produced a report entitled Housing Conditions of the Working Classes in the City of Dublin (Local Government Board for Ireland, 1914), which found private rented homes that were severely overcrowded, unsanitary, unsafe for children, and generally ‘unfit for human habitation’. James Connolly, a leading socialist Republican and trade unionist, was one of the executed leaders of the 1916 Irish rebellion against the British Empire and signatory of the 1916 Proclamation of the Irish Republic. Writing in his newspaper, the Worker's Republic, he wrote in 1899 about the slum housing conditions in Dublin and describes it in a way that echoes through the century since they were written to resonate with today's housing crisis:
The housing accommodation of the Dublin workers is a disgrace to the City; high rents and vile sanitary arrangements are the rule, and no one in the Corporation seems to possess courage enough to avow the truth, or to face the storm of obloquy which would be directed upon the head of the councillor who would take the opportunity to expose on the floor of the City Hall the manner in which the interests of house landlords are protected. (Connolly, 1899)
He went on to describe the solutions to the crisis then, which also remain relevant as solutions today…
Dedication
- Rory Hearne, Maynooth University, Ireland
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Housing Shock
- The Irish Housing Crisis and How to Solve It
- Rory Hearne
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The unprecedented housing and homelessness crisis in Ireland is having profound impacts on Generation Rent, the wellbeing of children, worsening wider inequality and threatening the economy. Hearne contextualises the Irish housing crisis within the broader global housing situation by examining the origins of the crisis in terms of austerity, marketisation and the new era of financialisation, where global investors are making housing unaffordable and turning it into an asset for the wealthy. He brings to the fore the perspectives of those most affected, new housing activists and protesters whilst providing innovative global solutions for a new vision for affordable, sustainable homes for all.
8 - Inequality and Financialisation
- Rory Hearne, Maynooth University, Ireland
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REITs and ‘cuckoos’ come home to roost: private equity takes over the Irish housing market
The ‘success’ of government policy in making Irish property an attractive asset for global investors, equity and wealth funds has resulted in a dramatic increase in investor flows into real estate in Ireland. The total assets in real estate funds in Ireland (about two thirds of which are held in property in Ireland) almost doubled from €6.9 billion in 2014 to €12 billion in 2015, and then increased by over 400% to reach €27 billion by the third quarter of 2018 (Central Bank, 2018).
The PricewaterhouseCoopers’ 2017 report on emerging trends in real estate in Europe noted that alongside ‘established multi-family markets in Germany, Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands … an institutionally backed build-to-rent, or private rented sector (PRS), is beginning in Ireland’, with investment in the private rental sector in Dublin referred to as ‘a home run’ by investors (PwC and Urban Land Institute, 2017: 13).
Figure 8.1 shows that the non-household sector (comprising private real estate funds and financial investors, charitable housing organisations and state institutions) significantly increased its role in buying residential property in Ireland from 2013 onwards.
Table 8.1 shows that by 2017 the non-household sector had become ‘a significant actor in the Irish residential property market both in terms of purchases and sales’ (CSO, 2019b). In 2017 alone, the nonhousehold sector spent €2.1 billion on the purchase of 8,766 dwellings; this equated to 15% of the value of all residential purchases in Ireland in 2017. Apart from 2016, the volume of non-household purchases has increased every year since 2011, when just 760 non-household purchases were made. The number of purchases of dwellings by the non-household sector in 2017 was 11 times higher than in 2010. The value of non-household purchases has increased consistently from 2010, when the non-household sector spent just €171.9 million on dwellings. The number of sales from this sector also increased from 4,482 in 2010 to 16,031, and in value terms from €1 billion in 2010 to €4.3 billion in 2017.
12 - A Green New Deal for Housing: Affordable Sustainable Homes and Communities for all
- Rory Hearne, Maynooth University, Ireland
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Summary
Long-term, secure housing of decent quality is fundamental to our wellbeing and essential for every one of us to live a life with dignity. It fulfils the requirement of the basic human need for shelter and for a secure base that provides ontological security, mental and physical health; for a home in which to feel protected and to raise families and nurture individuals, especially children; and for a place that enables a good quality of life within the wider community. It is the base from which we can make friends, go to school, get a job, be a friend, partner and carer, fulfil our potential, and rest. Our home is a source of wideranging emotions for us, from belonging to security. Increasingly, our homes also have a central role in ensuring environmentally sustainable development and meeting the challenges of climate change. However, the fundamental role of housing as a home has been undermined by decades of neoliberal economic and housing policies to become a financialised asset whose primary value is that of an exchange commodity for investors. The real estate–finance ‘industrial complex’ – the banks, real estate equity funds, wealth funds, big accountancy firms, and legal and property professions – has turned homes into wealth extraction funds for the rich. As a result, housing systems across the world are failing to provide affordable, secure homes, resulting in deepening inequalities, and rising levels of housing exclusion, insecurity and poverty.
This housing shock is devastating the lives of increasing numbers of homeless individuals, families and children, and increasingly affects the working and middle classes, Generation Renters, migrants, students and elderly people. And it will continue to affect future generations. Many parents are wondering where their children will get a home when they grow up. Generation Rent is the first generation in over 50 years to experience a rupture in the social contract, without the opportunity their parents had of gaining affordable, secure homes. This is an unprecedented generational and economic inequality.
The financialisation of housing and the current market-dominated approach promises only a future of permanent unaffordability for the ‘locked-out’ generations. Social and economic divisions will worsen as a global ‘rentier class’ of investor landlords and equity funds amass wealth while making homes, cities and towns unaffordable for the average worker.
1 - Introduction: a New Housing Crisis
- Rory Hearne, Maynooth University, Ireland
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‘To the people of Ireland. To the renters worried about eviction or the next rent hike from their landlord, to the couchsurfers, the overcrowded, the aspirant home owners, the distressed mortgage holder, to the homeless in emergency accommodation and on our streets, to the commuter, the student, the disabled, the Traveller, and those in direct provision [housing for asylum seekers]. Today, we declare to you – we cannot be silent. We can no longer be silent to your suffering and the suffering of our fellow citizens. Today we have stood up and declared – that we, the people of Ireland, do not accept homelessness and the wider housing crisis as normal. We do not accept our fellow brothers and sisters being left to die on our streets for lack of homes. And because our Taoiseach [Prime Minister] and our government have shown themselves unwilling to take this crisis seriously, we are out here on the streets – we, the citizens of this Republic – we will do what this government is unwilling to do and so we declare the housing crisis a national emergency.’ (Excerpt from a speech given by the author at the MyNameIs homelessness protest concert outside Dáil Éireann, the lower house of the Irish parliament, December 2017)
Our housing system in Ireland, and housing systems across the world, are experiencing a structural ‘shock’. We are in the midst of an unprecedented housing and homelessness crisis. This is visible in the dramatic increase in housing inequalities and exclusion, from the rise in homelessness, mortgage arrears and foreclosures, to the collapse in home-ownership rates and, in particular, the emergence of ‘Generation Rent’ and ‘Generation Stuck at Home’. This new Generation Rent is being locked out of traditional routes to affordable secure housing such as home ownership, social housing and secure low-rent housing. They are being pushed into private rental markets with unaffordable high rents and insecurity of tenure, or forced into hidden homelessness, couchsurfing, sleeping in cars, or pushed back to live with their parents.
Ireland has had the largest fall in home ownership rates among European Union (EU) countries in the past three decades.
Acknowledgements
- Rory Hearne, Maynooth University, Ireland
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4 - The Normalisation of Homelessness
- Rory Hearne, Maynooth University, Ireland
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The Irish government has argued that Irish homelessness levels are normal in comparison with other countries. The then Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, publicly stated that “we are actually a country … that has a low level of homelessness” (Irish Independent, 2017). The data being used to draw this conclusion were drawn from a report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (2017) that stated explicitly that the figures set out could not be compared because they were compiled based on different definitions of homelessness. The Taoiseach also stated: “There always have been a certain number of people in emergency accommodation for one reason or another, particularly people who become homeless suddenly who were not on the housing list.” Moreover, a former chair of the state Housing Agency wrote: ‘Homelessness is a dreadful thing when it happens to someone, but it is a normal thing, it happens’ (The Journal, 2017: 26).
It is, in fact, very difficult to compare homelessness in Ireland with other countries because it is measured quite differently in each country. Some countries measure the number of people without shelter, others only measure those in specialised emergency accommodation, and yet others have a much broader view and include people who are living with friends and families because they have no alternative. Ireland actually has a narrow definition of homelessness – the number of people staying overnight in emergency accommodation paid for by the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government on any night in the reference week.
What is clear is that for Ireland, the scale of, and rate of increase in, homelessness is currently greater than anything in recent history.
Focus Ireland, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) providing services for people who are homeless, highlights that homeless organisations have never claimed that Ireland has a particularly higher rate of homelessness than other countries, but that ‘homelessness is too high, that it could be much lower and – in recent years – that it is growing appallingly and unnecessarily’. Homelessness, Focus points out, must be tackled, ‘not because it is higher than some international averages, but because it is wrong and avoidable’ (Focus Ireland, 2018: 34).
2 - Generation Rent
- Rory Hearne, Maynooth University, Ireland
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It is the younger generations and lower-income households that are most affected by the housing and homelessness crisis. Huge aspects of their lives have become precarious and insecure, as a result of insecure, low-paid and often part-time jobs, and insecure and unaffordable housing.
Generation Rent is the new housing precariat, living with precarious housing, precarious work contracts and an inability to access mortgage credit, alongside unaffordable house prices and rent. There are workers paying over half of their wages on rent. A person with an average salary, renting the average home, now has to allocate 86.3% of their earnings on rent (UN, 2019).
Generation Rent results from growing housing unaffordability and increasingly precarious and low-wage employment, a trend that began in the 1990s and 2000s during the last housing boom and continued into the post-2008 global financial crisis and subsequent austerity period. They are being outbid by global investors, wealthy individuals and so-called ‘cuckoo’ funds (after the cuckoo bird, which pushes other birds’ eggs out of their nests and moves in), turning homes into wealth-accumulating commodities, with the only option for Generation Renters being to rent co-living micro-homes.
Increasingly, these micro-apartments – essentially expensive ‘shoebox’ homes, sharing with dozens of other people, known as build-to-rent ‘co-living’ – are the only way for Generation Renters to afford to live in the biggest cities. In the US, up to half of renters in key cities face high housing cost burdens (unaffordable housing), spending more than 30% of their household income on rent (PriceWaterhouseCooper, 2019).
Many Generation Renters are also forced to live at home with their parents for much longer, perhaps unable to move out. Generation Rent could equally be described as Generation Stuck at Home, or Generation Home Birds. In Ireland, 82% of men and 75% of women aged 16 to 29 are still living at home with their parents, in contrast to Denmark where just 40% of men and 32% of women under 29 live with their parents (Eurostat, 2019).
Generation Rent also comprises construction workers (tradespeople, including plumbers, blocklayers, and electricians), who have become some of the most precarious workers in the economy.
Preface: Housing, Home, and COVID-19
- Rory Hearne, Maynooth University, Ireland
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Our homes and housing systems have been the frontline defence in preventing the spread of COVID-19. Across the world governments told people to ‘stay home’. But the COVID-19 pandemic ‘has laid bare the pre-existing and vast structural inequalities in housing systems all over the world’ (Farha, 2020). 1.8 billion people worldwide live with homelessness and grossly inadequate housing. Overcrowding and substandard housing makes prevention, self-isolation, and recovery more difficult. The importance of housing as a social determinant of health has never been more visible.
In Ireland, thousands live in unsuitable accommodation, institutionalised in homeless emergency accommodation, direct provision, or as ‘hidden homeless’. The faultlines of policy that accepted homelessness as ‘normal’ has been starkly revealed.
The COVID-19 recession will push more householders into housing and financial distress with many unable to pay their rent or mortgage. If they had been living in public affordable homes, there would be fewer arrears and less stress as they would at least have the support and protection of an affordable home.
COVID-19 shows the failings of the dominant neoliberal policy paradigm which treats housing as an investment asset rather than its vital role as a home that can ensure the health and dignity of those living in it. These policies commodified housing by handing it over to the private market.
But signs of hope are evident in countries such as Ireland that discarded the neoliberal policy book and enacted unprecedented measures in response to COVID-19, such as freezing rents and banning evictions. It was previously insisted upon that these protections were unworkable or unconstitutional. Empty Airbnb properties have been used to house the homeless. These actions show that there is no actual reason that homelessness and the wider housing crisis cannot be solved.
Unfortunately, the global and Irish housing crises will worsen unless this radical shift in housing policy becomes a permanent change in direction. There is a tsunami of financial distress and evictions ahead if the pandemic housing measures are not extended for at least three years, and support for tenants and homeowners including rent and mortgage write-downs are provided.
In response to the last economic shock, the burden of adjustment was paid for by ordinary people through austerity cuts to public investment such as social house building.
11 - The Right to an Affordable, Secure and Decent Home for all
- Rory Hearne, Maynooth University, Ireland
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The centrality of housing as a home for human dignity and wellbeing
A safe, secure home, built to a decent standard, is central to our very existence, our physical health and psychological wellbeing. It is necessary to facilitate child development and full citizen participation in society and the economy. A home is central to the dignity of each and every person and is the foundation of every person's life. It provides the secure base from which to carry out all of life's function. The importance of a home is shown most clearly by what happens to people when they don't have one. It is visible in the devastating physical and mental health impacts on those who are homeless, in particular on children.
A social justice, human rights and psychological approach to housing emphasises and understands its primary function as meeting the fundamental need of shelter and the secure ontological base of a home. In a widely accepted psychological theory on human motivation, Maslow's ‘hierarchy of needs’ identifies the most fundamental of human needs as ‘physiological needs’, which include shelter (Maslow, 1943). These are considered the main physical requirements for human survival.
Using Amartya Sen's capability approach, housing can be viewed as a ‘basic capability’ that provides ‘a real opportunity to avoid poverty’ (Hearne and Murphy, 2019). Housing that is decent and affordable allows people the freedom to focus on activities other than just survival. Housing enables people to be socially included: it provides an address, which enables access to education, employment, social services, community life, and political and civic participation such as voting; it enables people to form social relationships; and good quality, safe, and secure housing contributes to health and wellbeing.
When control over our housing situation is low (such as being in housing financial stress or living in fear of eviction from rented accommodation), ontological security is reduced, which can result in chronic stress responses. Therefore, access to adequate, affordable and secure housing is important not only for security and shelter but also for good health and wellbeing, and is central to family life and child development, as the home is the place where children grow up and the arena in which the most fundamental social relationships are formed and sustained.
Frontmatter
- Rory Hearne, Maynooth University, Ireland
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7 - The New Waves of Financialisation: Vultures and REITs
- Rory Hearne, Maynooth University, Ireland
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Summary
The Irish state's strategy to overcome the global property and financial crash of 2008 and achieve the recovery of financial institutions and the wider economy was based on the sale of ‘toxic’ and ‘non-performing’ loans and associated land and property, at a considerable discount, to international ‘vulture funds’ and property investors via the National Asset Management Agency (NAMA) and domestic banks. Central to this approach was supporting rental and house price inflation to bring about a recovery in the property market and therefore asset prices, and thus increase the attractiveness of these loans to potential vulture and investor fund purchasers, and improve the balance sheets of the bailed-out Irish banks. The strategy was based on a deepening of the financialisation of the Irish housing (and wider property) system. Irish governments enticed the ‘wall of money’ of private equity, global investors and vulture funds into Ireland to buy up the toxic loans and assets from NAMA, from the liquidators of the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation (IBRC, the former Anglo Irish Bank) and from the other Irish banks. In 2013, an emerging housing shortage became a further rationale of the government to justify incentives for global property funds that it was hoped would contribute to increasing the ‘supply’ of housing.
This chapter explains how this policy approach, enacted by the Irish state and the Fianna Fáil-and Fine Gael-led governments over the period 2008–19, but in particular during the Fine Gael–Labour government of 2011–16, has resulted in ‘non-bank entities’ such as vulture funds and international financial institutions purchasing large bundles of mortgages at a discount from Irish financial institutions, the hoarding of land bought at discount from NAMA and the banks by foreign investors, the increased purchase by investors of new and existing housing pushing out prospective home owners, a massive inflation in rents fuelled by Ireland's new investor landlord class, the real estate investment trusts (REITs), and increasing repossessions of homes and buy-to-let property. Through NAMA and the sale of assets from the winding-up of the former Anglo Irish Bank and other Irish banks, vulture funds had bought up to 90,000 properties and held at least €10.3 billion worth of assets in Ireland by 2016 (RTÉ One, 2017).
Index
- Rory Hearne, Maynooth University, Ireland
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5 - Working for Social Justice: Community, Activism and Academia
- Rory Hearne, Maynooth University, Ireland
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Summary
It is often argued that academics are supposed to do research and write books that present knowledge and analysis in an ‘objective’ and ‘nonpolitical’ format, and remain in the safe and closed spaces of academia, leaving politics and policy making to the politicians, policy makers and media. However, a genuinely ‘objective’ analysis would highlight the incontrovertible evidence of huge harm being done to societies from the current neoliberal policy hegemony in housing. I make the case in this chapter that a mature, open democracy must have space for academics, researchers and policy analysts to play the important role of ‘public intellectuals’, undertaking participatory and critical research, and ‘academic citizens’ to provide a voice in the public sphere that challenges inequalities and presents alternatives, and thus proactively contribute to social change in areas such as housing. Indeed this is necessary to avoid the groupthink and uncritical policy that contributed to the 2008 global financial crisis and subsequent Great Recession.
This chapter begins with outlining aspects of my own housing journey and provides strategies for achieving a fairer and rights-based housing system. This book is not a typical policy or academic work. But then I am not a typical academic author or policy analyst. Driven by the desire to challenge injustice and inequality and bring about real social change and social justice, I have worked with, and for, disadvantaged communities and wider civil society for my entire adult life. I have been an activist and campaigner, a researcher, community worker, policy analyst, author, lecturer, media commentator, and, more recently a podcaster. Some of this work has taken the form of paid jobs, but much of it has been voluntary. I hope this book will inspire community workers, activists, academics, policy analysts and researchers who seek to achieve empowerment, participation and social justice in their work.
A personal housing journey
We all need a home. We all have a housing journey. We have memories of our childhood and of growing up in our home. And as adults, we face a challenge of finding our own home. Then if have you children, the need for a long-term, secure, home in a safe neighbourhood becomes paramount in your priorities.
Contents
- Rory Hearne, Maynooth University, Ireland
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3 - Homelessness: the Most Extreme Inequality
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Summary
There is no inequality greater than homelessness and persistent housing insecurity. The United Nations (UN, 2017: 5) describes homelessness as:
… an egregious violation of human rights, threatening the health and life of the most marginalized…. Homelessness is the unacceptable result of States failing to implement the right to adequate housing. It requires urgent and immediate human rights responses by the international community and by all States.
Imagine the entire population of Irish towns such as Wicklow, Tramore or Ballina being uprooted overnight, along with their children, forced into homelessness. A national outrage and emergency action by government would surely swiftly follow. Yet homeless figures from November 2019 show that a population equivalent to one of these towns – 10,514 people, including 1,733 families and 3,826 children – are homeless and living in emergency hostels, hotels or Family Hubs, a type of emergency accommodation described in more detail later in the chapter. The number of homeless children has risen by a shocking 440% since 2014 (Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government, 2019b).
Homelessness is a deeply traumatic event, especially for children, leaving emotional scars that may last a lifetime. At least 12,000 children have experienced the trauma of homelessness at some point in past five years in Ireland. Children are affected emotionally and developmentally from spending many months, and in even years, in emergency accommodation. They have been damaged, emotionally and developmentally, in a form of structural violence resulting from the housing crisis and government policy failure. The psychological stress and poor living conditions associated with homelessness has significant negative health effects, especially in mental health (Hearne and Murphy, 2017).
Homelessness has increased exponentially since 2013, when Ireland entered a period of economic recovery. The number of homeless families and children in emergency accommodation increased by a staggering 344% between 2014 and 2019 (Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government, 2019b).
Figure 3.1 shows the scale in the increase of family homelessness from 2014 to 2019. This is a new phenomenon for Ireland. In 2013, in the Dublin region, between ten and 20 families per month presented as newly homeless. By 2014, this increased to an average of 32 families per month and by 2015 to 62 new families per month. By 2018, on average, between 80 and 120 families presented as homeless every month in Dublin (Focus Ireland, 2019).
10 - The People Push Back: Protests for Affordable Homes for all
- Rory Hearne, Maynooth University, Ireland
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Summary
Housing has always been a deeply political issue given its centrality to people's lives. However, how it is politicised and treated, and its prominence in political and public debate, has changed over time. Housing is now becoming a political battleground of the 21st century between big finance, government and citizens seeking affordable housing. Cities are ‘ground zero’, the most advanced and intense front of the housing battle. As housing has become marketised and financialised by the global wealthy and investment funds, those excluded have become angry and are pushing back, asserting that housing should be affordable and available to all as a human right. From New York to Berlin, Barcelona to Dublin, protests are erupting, encouraging people to think differently about housing and forcing politicians to change policies. New housing movements highlight the human cost of the housing crisis, challenging global investors and proposing changes to local and national government policy. Ireland has been at the forefront of the new wave of housing campaigns. Irish people are angry at unprecedented levels of homelessness and the political failure to provide affordable homes. Housing has moved from being of peripheral concern to policy makers and government to becoming the number one political and public issue of concern, as growing sections of the population are drawn into a widening crisis, and new protests are putting housing to the top of the political agenda.
New housing protests are challenging evictions and rising homelessness, and the scandal of derelict properties and high rents, and are campaigning for the use of vacant public land for affordable homes for all and the inclusion of the right to housing in the Constitution and law.
New housing protests in Ireland
A housing movement has been increasingly active in Ireland since 2014, responding to growing homelessness, and rental and mortgage arrears crises. Activity initially involved a number of small grassroots groups working incrementally to develop strategies and tactics around how to tackle the housing crisis in Ireland. A larger housing social movement erupted sporadically in 2016 over plans to demolish and redevelop Apollo House, a former government office block, and then in a more sustained manner in 2018 with the Take Back the City and Raise the Roof campaigns.