This blog post is written by CATU NatComms

The huge vote for Catherine Connolly and the collapse of the Fine Gael and Fianna Fail vote is an important moment in the South that will echo for years. The lack of safe, secure housing, and the need for investment in public services rather than increased militarisation and privatisation was a consistent message throughout Connolly’s campaign. Many communities that have borne the brunt of austerity, lack of services and overcrowding returned a higher number of spoiled votes than votes for government parties. The defining factor underlining the current political landscape in Ireland is the massive instability, suffering and exploitation that neo-liberal housing policies have caused to hundreds of thousands of workers island-wide.

This crisis is set to get worse. Rent pressure zone rules have been torn up by the current Government in the South and now landlords will be able to hike rents between tenancies. “Market rent” is increasingly higher than total median earnings in cities like Dublin. The government’s answer to the crisis is to give tax breaks to developers for increasingly smaller and worse apartments. Instead of a Government that acts in the interest of people, we are treated as cash cows for private investment funds. There have already been calls by media figures that government parties will need to make even more concessions to the right to win back credibility after their defeat in this election. This will put many people in our community in danger due to their ethnicity, their medical needs, their gender and their family circumstances.

As Ireland’s community and tenants union, the massive defeat of the Government in this election in the South is a huge opportunity to ramp up pressure for our demands for housing justice:

– Public homes on Public Lands

– A Decrease in Rent

– A Ban on Evictions

– End Direct Provision (provide secure accommodation for people seeking refuge from war, violence and climate breakdown)

– An end to the expansion of Airbnbs and short term lets

– An end to the scandal of children growing up in emergency accommodation

– Culturally-Appropriate Accommodation for the Traveller Community

– Increase of public land ownership

– Build communities of care: education, community, health, addiction & mental health services

As discussions of left unity progress, these demands should be front and centre and representatives of communities and political parties should act in support of collective action for these demands.
We can’t wait until the next general election to meet these demands. We need to make evictions unworkable. We need to make rent affordable by refusing to pay rack rents and challenging rent hikes. We need to defend ourselves against exploitation from landlords and vultures. We need to build local and communal resilience to take our futures back.