Ireland needs return to mass mobilisation to bring change to housing system
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The late-19th century Land War, which involved mass nonpayment of rent by tenant farmers, led to the breaking up and redistribution of estates held by the Anglo-Irish ruling class and to the mass construction of labourers’ cottages throughout rural Ireland. As a result, by the beginning of the 20th century, Ireland had more public housing than anywhere else in the UK.
In the late 1960s, the Dublin Housing Action Committee and other groups around the country waged militant campaigns for better housing involving occupations, squatting and eviction resistance.
Just a few years later, between 1970-73, tens of thousands of council tenants across Ireland went on rent strike against increased rents, poor housing conditions, and a lack of services and facilities in council estates, amongst other issues. On May 11, 1971, the reported the tenants’ commitment that “evictions would be met with physical resistance by selected action groups”. Attempts to evict rent-striking tenants were, in fact, successfully resisted in Kilmore West in Dublin and Newmarket on Fergus in Clare, amongst other areas.
These popular and well-organised movements forced successive governments to take steps to meet the country’s housing needs.
There are encouraging signs that we are beginning to see the development of similar militant and broad-based movements today. The Community Action Tenants Union Ireland (CATU) was established in 2019 and currently has 2,000 members throughout the island of Ireland.
CATU uses "collective direct action" methods such as picketing the homes and businesses of landlords who have stolen deposits, refused to carry out essential maintenance, or attempted to carry out evictions.
On Friday, March 31, the day before the eviction ban was due to expire, around 100 CATU members and supporters rallied at The Spire in central Dublin before marching to the Customs House and occupying the offices of the Department of Housing where they sought to deliver a letter to minister Darragh O’Brien detailing a list of demands. These included the extension of the eviction ban to cover licensees (lodgers and those in student housing), access to public housing for anyone who wants it, rent reductions, improvements in standards in emergency accommodation, and the abolition of direct provision.
The minister refused to meet the activists after reportedly being advised that it would be “unsafe” to accept the letter, and no other senior civil servant deigned to make an appearance.
CATU’s action highlights how the lifting of the eviction ban has been a clarifying moment for many people regarding the politics of housing, as well as a potential turning point in the fate of the current Government. The Government’s refusal to maintain the ban despite Darragh O’Brien’s acknowledgement that it would very likely lead to increased homelessness has made it clear to many where the Government’s real interests lie, namely in protecting the financial interests of landlords and developers.
There has also been a clear hardening of attitudes amongst the different sides in the housing debate.
While the Irish Property Owners’ Association stated that they "would not stand idly by" if the ban was not lifted, tenants supported by CATU and others have become increasingly forceful in stating they will not be easily removed from their homes, given the significant risk of homelessness that they would face if evicted.
Linked to this, there is a growing public understanding of the idea of ‘overholding’, referring to the practice of refusing to leave after receiving an eviction notice issued by the landlord or a determination order from the Residential Tenancies Board in situations where the original eviction notice was contested.
While tenants previously assumed they had to leave on the date given in an eviction notice or in an RTB determination order, it has become more widely understood that this is not the case. In fact, a landlord or bailiff cannot forcibly evict a tenant from their home without securing a court eviction order, which may take months or years to secure and cost the landlord thousands of euros in legal fees.
These legal niceties are routinely ignored by landlords carrying out illegal evictions, such as a recent particularly horrifying case in Donegal where a migrant family was forced out of their home.
People facing eviction are typically uncertain, isolated, and fearful. In order to feel secure in the face of potential intimidation and to be able to remain in their homes past an eviction date, they need to have the active and visible support of their neighbours and the wider community.
CATU has already said that it will support those facing eviction in the coming months due to the lifting of the eviction ban. It has the potential to play a critical role in rallying local support to those who are overholding, or anyone else facing eviction, empowering them to remain in their homes.
On April 1, the day after the CATU action, thousands more people gathered outside the Dáil as part of the Cost of Living Coalition’s protest against the lifting of the eviction ban. The final speaker, who is himself facing eviction along with 25 other tenants in Tathony House in Dublin 8, told the audience that he would not leave his home to face homelessness even if this meant physical resistance. When he asked the thousands gathered if they would stand with him he was greeted with rapturous cheering.
Ireland’s history of mass organisation and collective direct action to secure improvements in housing and living conditions is directly relevant to the present.
The strategies and principles that have worked in the past, and that we need to return to now, are mass organisation, collective direct action, and public ownership. These are the only means through which we can force the Government to address the immediate housing crisis and start to build a fairer housing system.