Berliners Just Voted For A Housing Revolution - If You Want The Same In Ireland You Need To Read This
Yesterday saw the people of Berlin vote for a housing revolution that would see up to 240,000 privately-owned rental properties brought into public ownership to be used as affordable public housing. A clear majority of 56% of Berliners backed the proposal, with just 39% voting against..
The now adopted proposal specifically targets institutional ‘mega-landlords’ that own 3,000 or more homes in the German capital. Many of these homes were originally publicly built and publicly owned before being sold off en masse by the German political establishment, sometimes for as little as €7,500 per apartment.
While the vote is not legally binding it puts huge pressure on the political establishment to enact legislation to allow for the compulsory purchase of vulture-landlord controlled housing at prices ‘well below market value’.
Incredibly, just one major German political party - Die Linke / The Left - fully supported a Yes vote in yesterday’s housing referendum. The result shows the extent of the major disconnect between the people of Berlin and the political establishment in relation to the issue of housing.
And here in Ireland only one political party has consistently called for vulture-controlled housing to be brought into a new system of Universal Public Housing. That party is Éirígi.
View the ground-breaking interactive #TrackTheVultures map here
For the last five years Éirígí has been to the fore of researching, highlighting and pushing back against the vulture takeover of Irish housing. The ground-breaking research of our Track The Vultures project has established that a handful of vulture landlords are on track to own at least 31,000 Irish homes by 2023. You can view the exact location of those homes on the #TrackTheVulture interactive map
We want to see all of these homes brought into permanent public ownership as part of a wider ‘build and buy’ strategy to create a new system of Universal Public Housing that would provide secure, income-linked affordable homes to anyone that was in need of housing.
UP Housing is the only system of housing that can permanently end the housing crisis and transform Irish society for the better in the process. It would fundamentally change the structure of Irish housing, replacing both social and cost rental housing, while also removing the need for not only vulture landlords, but virtually the entire private rental sector.
The response of the larger Irish political parties to the Berlin referendum reveals that they have no intention of stopping the march of the vulture landlords and no intention of delivering the structural changes that are needed to deliver secure, affordable housing for all.
Eoin Ó Broin has repeatedly stated that Sinn Féin have no ideological or principled problem with vulture landlords operating in Ireland
Take Sinn Féin for example. Their spokesperson on housing, Eoin Ó Broin, was quick to pour cold water of a Berlin-style nationalisation of vulture landlord housing, stating that ‘I don’t think the state need to do that’ (in Ireland).
This is, of course, fully consistent with Sinn Féin’s previously stated position that they have no principled opposition to large-scale institutional landlords operating in the country.
Sinn Féin’s views on housing matters because they are very likely to be in government on both side of the border in the near future. And it matters because their housing policies are the most progressive of the main opposition parties in Leinster House.
As deeply mistaken and flawed as Sinn Féin’s housing policies are, the policies of Labour, the Social Democrats and, of course, the coalition government parties are even worse. None of the larger Leinster House parties - in government or opposition - have even begun to consider the sort of measures that will be needed to deliver housing justice. Those who want an Irish housing revolution will need to look beyond Leinster House for inspiration and leadership.
Éirígí-organised ‘Vultures Out!’ protest in Dundrum, May 2021
The Berlin referendum may not be legally binding, but it is still hugely important. In an unprecedented manner the citizens of the capital city of the largest country in Europe have instructed their political leaders to compulsory purchase billons of euros of private property.
In doing so they have breached the holiest of holiest principles of capitalism - the ‘right’ of private landlords to own unlimited amounts of homes and the ‘right’ of private landlords to generate obscene wealth from the provision of a basic human right.
Berliners have asserted, in the most spectacular of ways, that the citizen’s right to housing must trump the landlords ‘right’ to private profit.
Éirígí commends the left-wing forces and housing activists that campaigned for the Berlin referendum and commends the people of Berlin for striking a huge blow for housing justice in their own city and far beyond.
For us in Ireland, the Berlin vote shows us that major housing victories can be won by grassroots campaigns without the support of the larger opposition parties. And that the housing debate can, and must, be pushed into new territory, beyond the ‘safe’ boundaries that have been defined by those who profit from housing and their gombeen political fixers
Over the last five years Éirígí has shown its commitment to the fight for housing justice. With UP Housing and the #TrackTheVultures project we have brought new information and new, solution-driven, ideas to the housing debate.
No political party, large or small, can match the coherence of Éirígí’s housing vision or the consistency of our housing activism on the streets. Join us today to fight for housing justice and New Republic. Be the change!