WHO HASN’T HEARD or said the phrase: “we need more homes”. What politician hasn’t promised more homes?
Schools and businesses say they can’t recruit essential staff due to the shortage of homes. So it’s no surprise that we have the highest percentage of young adults in the EU who plan to leave the country in the next three years because they’ve no hope of getting their own home.
To top this all off, every month brings a record number of children without a home. Everyone, it seems, agrees on one thing. We need more homes. And we need them ASAP.
We are consistently told The Market of large developers and investment funds will solve the housing crisis. But after 30 years of letting The Market control housing, it’s now as clear as mud that The Market is incapable of ensuring everyone in Ireland has an affordable and secure home.
So, The State should step in, but many in Ireland don’t believe The State has the capability. Which is not surprising considering that every Government for the last three decades has ensured Ireland’s wealth has not materialised into the likes of decent healthcare or public transport systems that are the cornerstones of other European states.
So, it isn’t a shock to anyone that our collective hope of solving the housing crisis in the next government’s lifespan is low. This could lead many to a despair-induced apathy towards the upcoming election or, even more depressingly, a few parroting xenophobes and racists who are scapegoating the least responsible for the housing crisis. But if people could realise the unique opportunity we have at our feet, they would find hope again.
The reality is, that using existing vacant and derelict buildings is the quickest, cheapest, and most sustainable way to create more homes in every city, town and village in Ireland.
At the last census in 2022, we had over 163K vacant homes, 48K of which were empty for longer than five years. There was an extra 66K holiday homes sitting empty most of the year. Not to forget the 20K derelict homes, deemed uninhabitable by Geodirectory in the second quarter of this year. Geodirectory also counted 30K empty commercial buildings (many of which could be converted to homes), the highest commercial vacancy rate in the country’s history.
Add to all that, there’s an extra 18K to 35K homes being used as hotels on sites such as Airbnb. Many of these ‘empty’ homes are in town and city centres, where they contribute to inflated prices and rents by keeping much-needed homes off The Market. Vacant and derelict buildings are a market and system failure.
We’ve often heard that we can’t tackle vacancy or dereliction because “the data isn’t accurate enough”. And they’d be right, it isn’t accurate enough, but this is not a justification for inaction. Because the reality is we have no accurate data on buildings in Ireland. Just look at the news coverage of new home constructions, the official figures are always easily contested because there’s no accurate measurement.
We don’t know exactly how many homes are being built, where they’re being built, or when they will become someone’s home. In fact, we don’t even know exactly how many homes there are in the country. Yet we can all agree that despite these data weaknesses, we need more homes.
We all also know that we need sustainable homes. Homes within walking distance to public amenities and essential services like shops, healthcare and public transport. Luckily, we know that we already have plenty of homes lying empty in great locations. Take Wexford Town for example, where one in five homes was counted as vacant in the Census.
We often hear that vacancy and dereliction is normal, that other countries also have the same problem. Like in Italy and Japan, where they have very rural villages and towns abandoned. Where they offer homes for as little as €1 with a promise that the new owner will renovate and repopulate these undesirable places. But in Ireland, it is our urban cores, where rents are eye-wateringly high, that suffer from the highest rates of vacancy and dereliction. This is not normal.
High rates of dereliction and vacancy in town and city centres have created a sense of ‘public squalor’, potentially feeding into a culture of abhorrence towards living in urban environments. Take for example, one infill developer — a builder specialising in development in urban settings — we met who told us “Families should not be living in cities”.
This is a form of snobbery reflected in property prices recently shared by the Irish Examiner, where homes in Cork City Centre and Blackpool were nearly half the price of homes much further out in the suburbs. Areas not served with the same level of amenities and convenience. This raises the question, why do people still pay more to be car-dependent, to commute long distances when they could live centrally in cities, towns and villages for less? Another big contrast to other European countries.
The reality is that living in urban environments provides the most sustainable lifestyle and communities, and crucially the most effective way to provide essential public services. So why haven’t successive governments prioritised urban living in Ireland? Why have they let a few irresponsible landowners increase their private wealth while the public must contend with urban squalor?
We often hear professionals such as those in academia, civil service and the media promote the ideology of private wealth at the expense of public squalor by repeating the myth that private property rights are non-negotiable.
We have been repeatedly asked to consider ‘The Poor Owners’, who have the hassle of owning more than one home and the hassle of dealing with decay and dereliction.
It has been suggested to us that owners should be allowed to leave their abandoned property to collapse onto the street because taking the property off them is a slippery slope towards Communism.
Early on in the #DerelictIreland campaign, a senior spokesperson for a local council informed us that owners were being traumatised in Cork City by the idea that their derelict building(s) might be officially placed on the Derelict Sites Register. The executive informed us it would be unproductive to record such properties publicly. We realised later, through discussions with staff in other councils, that this viewpoint is reflective of the mindset and practice that had developed in councils all over the country in the 34 years since the Derelict Sites Act was put in place. A culture of non-enforcement.
Interestingly, we have heard a lot less from these professionals about the people who are being traumatised through the ongoing struggle to get a home, or those living in substandard rented homes (council or private). It often makes us wonder where the empathy is, in a country supposedly renowned for its strong communities and caring mindset.
Another form of Irish snobbery raises its ugly head when it comes to old buildings and our architectural heritage. Again, unlike the rest of Europe, Ireland has shown what can only be described as a hatred towards its heritage buildings. We are led to believe that old is bad and new is good. Like the myth that old homes are worse for climate change, yet when you consider the embedded carbon, it takes 25% less carbon to renovate existing homes than demolish and build new ones.
Many still believe the myth that renovating an old property is too expensive when the data shows it’s cheaper than a new build. Especially if you consider the €600K now being quoted as the costs to build an apartment, it becomes much clearer that using existing buildings is the cheapest and quickest way to densify urban areas.
Urban dereliction has become a visual representation of the inequality in Ireland created by government policy. So, if we keep voting for the same political parties, does that mean we are happy with their results? Are we happy with dead towns and city centres, the public squalor?
Wind back to the last general election in 2020. Vacancy and dereliction were not a mainstream campaign issue. Now in 2024, this has dramatically changed, as evidenced in the recent local elections when numerous candidates campaigned on dereliction issues. There is no doubt that the sustained #DerelictIreland campaign has changed things, from policy to practice to cultural mindset, but there is still a long way to go.
As Martin Leahy sings, “Everyone should have a home”. But instead of ensuring everyone has a home, society has let the buildings rot while the vulnerable try and survive on our streets, on spare sofas or in inadequate shelters. Now is the time to change all of this.
Jude Sherry and Dr Frank O’Connor are founders and creators of the anois agency and they run the #DerelictIreland campaign.
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