On the merits of Squatting as a tactical response to the permanent housing crisis.
While the government says there is no money to build social housing, they seem to forget the fact that there are over 270,000 vacant houses, flats and apartments scattered around the country, and over 30,000 in Dublin alone. There are over 90,000 people waiting on the social housing list in Ireland – but there is quite an easy answer to the housing crisis, the government doesn’t even need to stretch itself any distance to address. they simply need to introduce a law to legally allow people to squat properties that have been empty for over 6 months, or relax the laws to make it easier to squat. Coupled with a sensible social housing strategy, based around people’s actual needs and not purely profit for landlords, the housing/homeless crisis could be greatly reduced.
No government loan schemes, no sub-standard, gentrified social housing projects, and no need to wait for a new property bubble to develop to finish off the economy altogether. Over one billion a year is provided by the government to create and sustain social housing in Ireland over a two year period. The majority of this is a simple giveaway and effectively a government subsidy to private landlords (including large and small landlords, hotels, hostels and B&Bs), as the money goes straight into the coffers of already property- and capital-rich individuals/companies. It is largely dead money to those homeless or precariously homed people who have no choice but to pay artificially inflated rent for, in many cases, sub-standard and dangerous accommodation. [Read More]
