GE2024 ge2024THE GENERAL ELECTION is coming up tomorrow, and despite all the media attention surrounding Sinn Féin’s internal troubles, Simon Harris’ tetchy interaction with a care worker, and Fine Gael supporters laughing at teachers, housing is the most pressing issue for me and many others.
I am a 29-year-old renter living and working in Dublin. This makes me a millennial, and also an unwilling participant in what is dubbed “Generation Rent” in the most expensive city in Europe for renters.
In many ways, I am a stereotypical Irish person in their late 20s – I have lived in a total of 16 share houses since I left home for college in Galway at the age of 18, I did a two-year stint in Australia and later, I moved to Dublin for work. My first ever share house was in Galway city centre, the rent was €400 a month (that was considered pricey at the time) and it was a flat attached to a nice family’s home which I shared with a Spanish Erasmus student.
We didn’t have a washing machine (I washed my clothes in the bath), but 19-year-old me didn’t care; I was studying something I was passionate about and felt that I was finally experiencing independence and a sense of adulthood that secondary school does not facilitate.
If you had asked 19-year-old me what I was most worried about for the future, I would have said getting a job. But now, a decade later and despite our best attempts to tread the same path of financial security as our parents, myself and my working peers are at the mercy of a generation-defining housing emergency.
Back in 2014, the housing crisis was burgeoning. The main groups drawing attention to it were homeless charities and student’s unions, the people they represent being particularly vulnerable to a disaster that has become all-consuming over the last decade, affecting almost every person in Ireland either directly or indirectly. Even the government and then Taoiseach Enda Kenny began to acknowledge it, promising that the Government would deal with it. Déjà vu? Yeah, me too.
As my generation levelled up through college, Master’s degrees, further education, graduate programmes and work experience, so too did the housing crisis. Every year, rooms were scarcer, the competition grew more intense and prices ballooned; and every year, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil promised us that the tide was turning, that progress was being made and that we were almost out of the woods.
But as we approach the end of 2024 and the upcoming election, the government’s promises to turn the ship around haven’t materialised, and my generation faces a housing crisis that becomes more dystopian by the day.
A mouldy, cramped one-bed apartment in Ireland’s cities now costs roughly €2,000 per month to rent, and it is quite common to see prices of €2,500 or more. Increasingly ludicrous property advertisements on websites taunt young adults looking to get an honest shot, and these often go viral on social media.
Every young person in Ireland has seen rental adverts from hell: a shed in a back garden in Dublin that was €3,500 a month, that time a landlord put a single bed on their landing and set the price at €1,800, and a landlord who was charging €1,900 for a single room that the tenant could only occupy Monday-Thursday, and wasn’t allowed to use the kitchen in.
With traditional avenues of finding accommodation like estate agencies and Daft.ie adverts overwhelmed by tenancy applications, and finding success there akin to winning the lottery, 30-somethings and under rely on their personal social media accounts for help. (“Hi guys, looking for a room in Dublin, I’m desperate”) or sharing their friend’s posts, (“Please share to help my lovely friend find a room”). And all the while, the dank rental rooms of Ireland surge well beyond €800 per month, young people are left wondering: “What the hell am I doing here?”
I fear that my generation spends far, far more time thinking, talking and worrying about housing than our government does. It is a topic that pervades pretty much all of our lives – our friends emigrate in droves, move back to the childhood bedroom, or, more rarely, escape the rat race because of the generosity of the bank of Mam and Dad.
Friend groups are unable to socialise, relationships are put on hold or break down, mental health suffers, housing protests are ignored, more subsidies are given to landlords, investment funds buy more housing stock, and the government blames anyone but themselves.
As a bit of research for this piece, I did a rough Instagram poll of my (not many, but all real) followers to get a sense of what my peers are feeling about this government in regard to housing. The answers were anticipated and yet somehow more bleak than I expected. Over 55% of people who emigrated said they did so because of housing, and over 80% responded that they were reluctant to come back because of it.
As for my friends living here, 93% of them said they seriously intend to vote, and a massive 92% said housing was their number one voting issue for this election. Their responses were varied and also touched on a range of other issues like climate collapse and environmental policy, a decrease in hospitality VAT, nightlife, cost of living, mental health funding, transportation of weaponry through Irish airspace and Gardaí that are better equipped to deal with anti-social behaviour.
One respondent said:
This government has no interest in tackling any of the major issues affecting the majority of people – housing, social issues, climate breakdown and biodiversity crisis, foreign affairs etc. They seem exclusively interested in doing things which on paper appear to make the economy look strong and line the pockets of the wealthy – which includes them. They do not want to know, or care about the issues affecting working-class people, who they seem to blame for any of the situations or conditions they are facing.
Another respondent, who recently emigrated, noted:
Housing I would put second [after the climate crisis in terms of voting] and is somehow at the root of nearly every problem in Ireland, but I would not give my first preference to a party who says they will build the most houses as soon as possible but don’t have an emphasis on environmental and infrastructure issues too.
Another friend in Galway is having to house hunt for the first time in three years:
Everything is around €700-€800. I saw an advert for a single bedroom in Salthill – €900 a month. Things have gotten 10 times as crazy [as they were three years ago].
As the housing crisis gets more and more acute, gathering international attention from outlets like The Guardian, France24 and Euronews, the government hasn’t treated this crisis with the urgency it deserves. Valid criticism by opposition parties on unmet housing targets, vulture funds buying up entire estates and the ending of the no-fault eviction ban has often been met with disdain and bluster from the government.
Government parties will point to metrics like full employment and high tax receipts as proof of a booming economy, but that is little consolation to the 522,486 adults aged 18 years and over who are living with their parents, the ones who emigrated, or to renters, like me, whose entire adult lives have been shaped by a housing crisis that has no limits.
Those with their hands on the levers of power in this country, all well paid, are insulated from the real-world consequences of their actions, or lack thereof. Who among them knows someone who is homeless, trapped in a vicious rental cycle, or living in a box room?
So, I write a message to the government before the election this week. Any TD, minister or campaigning politician who insists that the situation is getting better is welcome to do a house swap with me for a while to see how we young adults really live.
You can move into my single room and we can swap salaries as well! It would be a bit of a step down from what you’re used to, but I’m sure you’ll manage. It’ll be an experiment we can call youth voter engagement. After all, you guys will have this housing crisis sorted soon – right?
Sylvia Power is a 29-year-old editor who lives and works in Dublin.
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