PBP Limerick launch campaign to highlight derelict and vacant housing in Limerick

People Before Profit in Limerick will be running a campaign throughout February highlighting the scale of dereliction and vacancy in the city and county called #28daysofdereliction. As part of the campaign the party will highlight a different vacant or derelict property in Limerick every day throughout the month, culminating in a day of action planned with other members of the National Housing and Homelessness Coalition on February 26th.

The campaign has been launched following the release of the "Housing For All" quarterly report for Q4 2022 last week describing the actions that are to be implemented to tackle the housing crisis. The government’s plan intends to deliver 33,000 homes on average each year over the next decade and increase employment in the construction sector by 53,000.

As part of the report Limerick city and county council submitted their “Housing Action Plan” where they commit to "the creation of attractive and vibrant places through the renovation and re-use of obsolete, vacant and derelict homes" and that they shall "promote the conversion of vacant properties into new social and affordable homes through schemes including the Repair and Leasing Scheme, the Buy and Renew Scheme, and long-term leasing".

People Before Profit spokesperson Ruairí Fahy said "While there is now a suite of tools that exist to start tackling vacancy and dereliction it is clear that these tools don't go far enough or have enough ambition for tackling the homelessness crisis. There are over 100,000 vacant homes in the state but the suite of measures implemented under Housing for All aims to buy up and resell only 2,500 of these by 2026.

"People Before Profit have highlighted in their housing policy the necessary changes to quickly tackle the vacancy and dereliction. Some of these changes include giving owners 6 months to bring vacant properties back into use before they would face a levy at the rate of local rents for similar properties and after 1 year have the property taken into public ownership. Investment properties left empty or underused for more than six months should be subject to an annual tax of 20% of the value of the property, to discourage the current behaviour of large institutional landlords who leave properties empty to keep rental prices high."

The “Housing For All” quarterly report also outlines the need for councils to identify homes to be acquired under the upcoming "CPO programme for vacant properties".

Ruairí Fahy said “Our campaign will be helping people to send details of vacant properties in their area to vacanthomes.ie to encourage the council to use the "Buy & Renew" scheme to make these properties available for people to live in.

“We are also asking people to share the pictures and information about these homes with us through social media, @pbplimerick on Twitter and Facebook, so we can include them in the campaign. We are also working with our partners in the National Housing and Homelessness Coalition to organise a protest action in Limerick as part of the National Day of Action on Dereliction planned for Saturday February 26th.”

The "Housing for All" document declared that a "Commission on Housing" has been established to examine "issues such as tenure, standards, sustainability, and quality-of-life issues in the provision of housing as well as examining the potential for independent regulation of the social housing sector". This commission will also be tasked with bringing forward "proposals on the referendum on housing referred to in the Programme for Government."

Responding to this move on a referendum on housing Ruairí Fahy said "A People Before Profit bill to hold a referendum to place a right to housing into the constitution was passed in the Dáil in May 2021. This bill is now waiting to be brought forward to the next stage but is being stalled by the government. Pushing a referendum on housing off to another committee pushes such a referendum further into the future, leaving too much ambiguity as to what measures the government can implement to tackle the housing crisis.

“If we want an end to procrastination when implementing measures to actually tackling the housing crisis we need to remove the excuse that it is unconstitutional for the government to act in the interests of people before the profits of cuckoo and investment funds.”