This article first appeared in Unity, the weekly publication of the Irish Communist Party.
A RECENT report in the Irish Times stated that average monthly rents in the Republic now exceeds more than €2,000.
It was also reported that on May 1st there were only 2,300 homes available to rent nationally.
The author of a report on the question suggested that increases in rent in the open market “are being driven by an acute and worsening shortage of rental housing,”
On Monday 12th May, one of a row of cottages along the Grand Canal in Dublin simply collapsed in a pile of rubble.
It was sheer luck that nobody was injured or even killed.
Two articles have since been published in the paper on the collapse of the property which had been listed on Dublin’s City Council Derelict Sites Register for just under two years, but had for decades been falling into dilapidation.
As the author of one of the articles wrote “The building, over many years of total neglect, has simply rotted away and died.”
He also concluded that “In many cases, such dereliction is a choice on the part of property owners who are wealthy enough to let a property sit vacant year after year, blighting and corrupting the urban environment, as the land accrues value.”
The author of the second pieces suggested the same that, “Dereliction is a type of anti-social behaviour-but by rich adults.”
It has since been revealed that the property was owned by the Construction Industry Federation (CIF), the representative body of the construction industry in Ireland.
The facade of the building had until recently been concealed by a banner advertising a CIF construction safety campaign.
As one author wrote, “I will freely admit to having an almost
gluttonous appetite for irony, but this is a little too rich even for my tastes.”
He went on to quoted from Ulysses when one character states “Good puzzle would be to cross Dublin without passing a pub. “But as he added, “An equally good puzzles more than a century later, would be to cross Dublin without passing a derelict building.
There’s barely a street in the city centre that is not marred by abandonment and dilapidation, by boarded up windows and grubby, peeling facades.”
Mark O’Connell wrote those comments and agreed with the other author, David McWilliams that it is anti-social behaviour of a scale and impact only powerful groups are capable of.
McWilliams writes that the CIF is abandoning buildings a stone’s throw from the city during a housing crisis and that underscores the lamentable state of the Irish property market.
He adds that when an organisation with influence over housing and development policy can show such blatant disregard for the city, we know we have reached a new low in terms of bureaucratic incompetence and rank hypocrisy.
He goes on to state that we hear people talking on the airwaves about rebuilding Ireland, while at the same time allowing the dilapidated buildings the own to fall down during morning rush hour. “You couldn’t just make it up.”
Both quote statistics that show more than 14,500 home and commercial units vacant for over four years. O’Connell writes that for those who are suffering in various ways from the housing crisis-the growing number who are homeless, the young (and no longer young) who have lost all hope of owning their own homes or living anywhere close to where they work-these derelict properties amount to a profound insult, like watching someone throw out untouched food when you are convulsed by the pain of hunger.
He quoted from a book by Rory Hearne titled Gaffs where the author writes that the housing crisis is a “viscerally pernicious inequality.
Those without access to homes can literally touch and see derelict buildings abandoned because the owners have an of an excess wealth and property.”
The question was asked, “What is the Minister of Housing going to do about it?” However, it seems that the State’s view seems to be, well it’s a shame, of course, but we can’t prevent people doing whatever they want with their own property.
Whilst both O’Connell and McWilliams condemn those property owners for their “anti-social behaviour.”
The problem lies with the system, so readily defended by the government-capitalism-which puts the private ownership of the means of production distribution and exchange and everything else before the real needs of the people.