The Housing Crisis

While this particular issue of the magazine is focusing on the younger members of our community, here at GCN, along with the rest of the nation, we’ve been talking about an ever worsening problem aff ecting all generations – the housing crisis.

Although one would have to be deliberately ignorant not to have noticed the evidence before, the hugely upsetting recent photo of children sleeping on chairs in a Garda station became an image, and a fact, which could no longer be swept under the carpet.

Families being forced out of their homes by mortgage foreclosures, the unchecked and unacceptable sheer greed of rent escalations in the rental sector pushing people to their nancial limits, the rising numbers of people in emergency accommodation, (a figure which has doubled in the last three years to almost 10,000), - these may be the primary things that come to mind when considering the crisis, but there is also the fact that for many young people, the dream of eventually being able to aff ord their own home will remain just that.

When you look at the amount of young people aff ected by homelessness, it becomes apparent that a huge percentage of those are LGBT+. For many, it is untenable to live in a family home where they are either in danger or are unwelcome. The numbers also don’t reflect the officially undocumented number of homeless youth who go from friend’s couch to friend’s couch.

At the recent Raise The Roof rally, an estimated 12,000 protesters filled the streets. A hearteningly large number of those were young people chanting “student homes, not student loans” with at least 100 of them going on to stage a sit down protest outside Government Buildings.

TD Richard Boyd Barrett of People Before Profiposted that the rally was “a cry for a generation of young people, homeless families and kids, renters paying obscene rents in insecure tenancies, workers who can’t aff ord a home, those in mortgage distress.”

Taking into account the last few years of people-powered momentous change, journalist Una Mullally summed them up as “an intense five years where for many young people protest is as normal as going to a match or a gig.”

With a government far too slow on the uptake and seemingly out of touch with the actual lives of people who don’t have the luxury of huge salaries and a stable home to fall back on, an empowered and energised new wave of activists is exactly what the country needs now to drag it into a future of equality, including homes for all.