Carlow to hold National Day of Action on housing
An action will take place on Sat February 26 at 1pm as a part of the National Housing & Homeless Coalition’s national day of action.
Across Ireland counties are holding local demos to call for direct action to tackle the housing crisis. Locally activists will meet on the Hacketstown Rd. Cllr Adrienne Wallace and Cllr John Cassin will be speaking at the event. A similar event will take place at the same time in Kilkenny at the town hall.
People Before Profit cllr Adrienne Wallace said:
“According to the CSO there are approximately 200,000 vacant or derelict buildings in Ireland, with 1,400 of those in Carlow.
“During the worst housing crisis in the history of the state this is a scandal. I have consistently called to open the vacant homes and as of February last year 30 houses were returned to use, but the council needs to seriously ramp this up to meet the rising need for homes.”
Cllr Wallace continued:
“It is time to introduce a ‘use it or lose it’ policy for vacant sites and buildings. This policy would see any property vacant for more than 1 year, without adequate reason, be taken into public ownership.”
Independent cllr John Cassin added:
“Carlow town has a shortage of public land to build social and affordable homes. Last year, there were zero responses to the council's call for developers to sell land for public development.
“Yet there’s plenty of land in Carlow that isn’t being developed at all. The council and the State must start using CPOs to bring this land into public ownership. The market is consistently failing to deliver. It’s time for direct action.
“Rents continue to soar. Public land. Not enough social housing is being built. There are many in the squeezed middle who can’t get housing support and are also being denied a mortgage. We demand a fundamental change of direction.