Éirígí South Dublin Once Again Targets Vulture Landlord Sites In Sandyford
Éirígí South Dublin activists targeted three Vulture Landlord owned sites in the Sandyford Business District earlier today. Posters bearing the ‘Vultures Out!’ and ‘Build Universal Public Housing’ message were pasted onto the hoardings of all three sites.
The first of the three sites, on the corner of Carmanhall Road and Blackthorn Road, has been repeatedly flipped by land-speculators in recent years, with the price tag for the 0.7 hectare site skyrocketing from €6.5m in 2015 to €20m in 2020.
Éirígí activists fly-pasting “Vultures Out! - Build Universal Public Housing” posters onto the hoarding of the Marlet site on Carmanhall Road, Sandyford.
The current owner of the site, Marlet Construction, are attempting to secure planning permission for more than 330 Build-To-Rent apartments on the site. Build-To-Rent homes cannot be legally sold to owner-occupiers, but must instead be sold to a single Vulture Landlord.
The second site to get a Vultures Out! makeover was the infamous Sentinel Building at the other end of Carmanhall Road at the junction with Blackthorn Drive.
The Sentinel building was bought by Ireland’s largest domestic landlords, Brian and Luke Comer for just €850,000 in 2011. Six years later, in 2017, they secured planning permission to complete the building with 300 ‘apart-offices’. The five year time limit for this planning permission expired in 2022, without any construction taking place. Thus, for twelve years of Comer-ownership The Sentinel has rotted.
The skeleton of The Sentinel building towers over an Éirígí activist as they promote the “Vultures Out! - Build Universal Public Housing” message.
The third and final site targeted today was the Rockbrook site, directly adjoining The Sentinel site. It too is now owned by the Comer brothers who bought it from IRES REIT earlier this year for a reported €20m.
IRES had originally acquired the partially completed Rockbrook from NAMA in 2015 and four years later secured planning permission to complete the development with 428 Build-To-Rent apartments. No building has taken place in the four years since that planning permission was granted.
It is reported that the Comers will now develop both The Sentinel and Rockbrock together as a single development of 530 Build-To-Rent apartments. These 530 homes will be added to almost 2,000 other Vulture Landlord owned homes in the Sandyford Business District.
The Rockbrook site, with full planning permission for 428 Build-To-Rent homes, was recently sold by IRES REIT to the Comer brothers for a reported €20m.
The Marlet and Comer brothers sites that were postered today could all have had housing built on them a decade or more ago. Instead they have been left vacant and traded between land speculators, developers and Vulture Landlords. Millions of euros of profit have been made without a single home being built.
With each passing year, as the housing crisis has worsened, the cost of these sites has climbed ever higher — meaning that the cost of housing on these sites, when it is eventually built, will be far higher than it ever needed to be.
And there are hundreds, if not thousands, of similar sites all over Ireland — sites that are suitable and ready for housing. But instead they lie idle because they are controlled by the land-speculators, developers, bankers, vulture landlords and the other assorted parasites that control the housing sector.
Éirígí South Dublin has been leading the fight to highlight and push back against the vulture takeover of housing since 2016. If you’re ready to join the fight for housing justice and for a New Republic in South Dublin or anywhere else, join Éirígí today!