Dundrum Housing Justice Protest - Report & Photos
Yesterday saw Dundrum residents brave bracing November winds to come together to ‘Stand Up For Housing Justice’ outside the Central Mental Hospital. The protest had been organised by Éirígí Dublin South in opposition to the current government plan for the 27-acre plot of public land.
Standing up for housing justice outside the Central Mental Hospital
Speaking after the protest, local Éirígí representative Brian Leeson said, “We organised today’s protest to give local people an opportunity to publicly register their opposition to the masterplan that the government, through the Land Development Agency, has put forward for the hospital site.
The housing crisis is directly affecting people of all ages, from school children to pensioners and everything in between. The age range of those attending today’s protest reflected the all-of-society impact of the crisis. On behalf of Éirígí I want to thank everyone for coming along and adding their voices to the demand for housing justice.
Only income-linked rents are truly affordable
The government’s masterplan for the hospital site is deeply flawed and risks squandering the great potential offered by this unique plot of public land. The very high density of housing and very high proportion of one-bed and two-bed apartments contained within the plan will not deliver the vibrant, stable, inter-generational community that the government claim they want. Instead we are likely to see a permanently transient community and widespread over-crowding.
It’s clear that the plan is motivated by a political desire to produce as many housing ‘units’ as quickly and as cheaply as possible, as opposed to a genuine desire to address the long-term housing and community needs of the greater Dundrum area. The ‘build them cheap and stack them high’ approach to housing has been tried before in Dublin. It didn’t work then and it won’t work now.
Three generations of one family supporting the call for Universal Public Housing
Covid gave the government space to push ahead with their plans without having to genuinely engage with the community. The LDA’s carefully managed and controlled webinars were nothing but a box-ticking exercise in a sham ‘consultation’ process that had a pre-determined outcome before it even began.
That sham process culminated in a 72 page masterplan that includes great detail about every aspect of the proposed development apart from the issues that really matter. Just one paragraph out of 72 pages is dedicated to the issue of tenure - to the issue of who will ultimately own the homes on this public land.
Worse still, there wasn’t any detail relating to the sizes of the individual homes that the government intend to build or to the rents that future tenants would be paying. The absence of such critically important details should set the alarm bells ringing for anyone that wants this land to be used for high-quality, sustainable, affordable housing.
Only permanent public ownership of housing can guarantee permanent affordability
Today’s protest put down a marker for the government. In the coming weeks and months we will be working within our community to build support for an alternative plan for the hospital site - a plan that would deliver new community facilities alongside an appropriate volume of housing that would be held in permanent public ownership and open to local people from all income backgrounds.
This model of Universal Public Housing is the only model of housing that can permanently end the housing crisis and transform Irish society for the better in the process. I’d encourage anyone that’s interested in helping us build support for UP Housing to get in touch with Éirígí today”
If you’re ready to join the fight for housing justice and a New Republic, get in touch today!