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29 Apr
A protest against soaring rents and the ongoing housing crisis is expected to draw crowds to Cork City centre tomorrow as the latest figures show another jump in the cost of putting a roof over your head.
The gathering on the Grand Parade at 1pm is being organised by the Cork branch of the National Homeless and Housing Coalition, a national pressure group aming to mobilise mass protest against the ongoing housing crisis.
It will be one of a series of actions organised across Ireland and they come as the Government is looking at reforming laws on vacant housing and fast-tracking the rehab of empty and derelict social housing for the tens of thousands of Ukrainian refugees arriving in Ireland.
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The NHHC says that with an estimated 10,000 people homeless in Ireland - and an estimated 182,000 derelict, empty or unused housing units - Ireland is facing a manufactured crisis that successive Governments have failed to deal with.
February's Daft.ie report into housing and rents found that Cork city's average rent now sitting at €1,539 while a place in the county will set you back around €1,217 a month.
That's a 6.3 percent increase in the city and a whopping 9.9 percent in the county compared to the same time the year before. Overall rents have gone up 10.3 percent nationally.
A spokesperson for the National Homeless and Housing Coalition said they were "calling everyone to join together in a united show of solidarity to demand urgent action on the housing and homeless emergency."
"The government allows the housing market to be a place where huge profits are made for the few while most of us are bled dry."
"Their inept policies and inaction has condemned whole generations to a lifetime of high rent with no chance of ever owning a home and at worst a life of housing insecurity and homelessness."
The pressure group is calling for public housing to be built on public land, an end to dereliction, evictions, and sell-offs to vulture funds.
"We demand a national referendum on a constitutional right to housing."