The plight of families on local authority housing waiting lists and the hardship caused by rising rent prices will be the focus of a major demonstration outside Dail Eireann next month.
It will be the biggest protest to date organised by the Housing Action Campaign, a coalition of inner-city tenants, students and first-time home buyers - in short, those most severely affected by the housing crisis.
The group was set up three months ago with two key demands: the introduction of rent controls, and the launch of an emergency building programme of local authority housing. It has already organised a series of meetings in Dublin and Cork and last week staged a demonstration outside the Mansion House during a meeting of Dublin Corporation.
"We're trying to put pressure on politicians at local and national level," says campaign secretary, Grace Lally, a Galwegian living in rented accommodation in Dublin. "We're only just getting going and we've already got a huge amount of support."
Citing rent increases of up to 25 per cent in the past year, she says there is an urgent need for rent to be linked to inflation or even frozen altogether. "A five-year rent freeze would not be totally uncalled for given the sort of increases we've had recently."
She also stresses the need for new legislation which would give tenants greater security of tenure.
"At the moment, landlords can raise rents without having to show any improvements. They can evict people with minimal notice. In Germany and other European countries, there is a mechanism by which tenants can challenge landlords to justify rent increases."
She cites the example of one elderly man who told a recent campaign meeting in Rathmines how he was being evicted from his flat because he could not meet rising rent payments. The 80-year-old man had been living in the house for 18 years and had carried out all improvements to it himself. Ms Lally says the job of adjudicating in disputes between landlords and tenants could be done by a local authority rent officer.
Such suggestions have received a sympathetic ear from Labour and the Green Party, she says. However, "Fianna Fail TDs have been less than friendly".
The successful constitutional challenge against rent controls by the former Fianna Fail Senator, Paddy Madigan, in 1982 "has been used as an excuse for inaction," says Ms Lally. "It is dragged up all the time to make any form of progress sound like an impossible dream."
In relation to increasing the housing supply, she says, the focus to date has been almost entirely on the private market to the neglect of local authority housing. The social housing building programme recently announced by the Government, involving the provision of 32,000 homes over four years, is a welcome step.
But it is not clear whether the homes will be priced at an affordable level, and, in addition, she says, "we have yet to see the details of this building programme. Are they just going to put up these houses in slap-dash fashion without providing services too?"
The Housing Action Campaign demonstration outside the Dail takes place on Thursday, June 3rd at 6.30 p.m.
