To Look After Our Own

Thankfully, the racist far right were annihilted to the point of humilation in the recent general election. This, as was pointed out in the Irish Times article, is no reason for us to rest on our laurels. As a nation, we need to get a few things straight about the causes of and solutions to our housing crisis. This includes having frank discussions about immigration, class and neoliberalism.

Far from being an exhaustative treatise on all of Ireland’s woes, I’m going to focus for now on NIMBYs as well as the idea that ‘we need to look after our own’, a clarion call for people who insist immigration is stymying efforts to lift worse off Irish people out of trouble. It’s hard to take either camp’s arguments at face value.

On one side we have NIMBYs, who won’t have their idyllic neighbourhood blighted by the working class, and on the other we have racists who are so riddled with the disease of nationalism they’re pratically frothing at the mouth. It’s not that clear-cut of course, I’m sure there’s plenty of overlap between NIMBYs and racists. We have a decent view of the detractors at this stage. What’s missing from this picture is government policy and the people who need accomodation whoever they may be.

We know, as an electorate, that we’re in a fairly dire state when it comes to housing. We have some of the highest rents in Europe if not the world and vast amount of us are coming to terms with never being able to afford to buy a house. Buying a house shouldn’t be the be-all end-all. People in the Ireland & the UK make such a fuss over owning property that we assume it’s the default state. It’s not for nothing either. Our wealth is based on our assets and our house is supposed to be our most valuable asset. If it weren’t for Fisher Price tenants rights coupled with our national obsession with property speculation a lot of us would be happy to rent long-term. Perhaps that’s a story for another day. For now, let’s assume that people would like more housing supply, or at the very least, cheaper rent.

What I suggest is the way forward is to take that group of NIMBYs and racists, crumple them up into a ball, and dispose of them in whatever wheelie bin takes out toxic waste. They have it completely arseways, and anyway, we have bigger fish to fry.

If we can accomodate all of this housing supply surely we’d be able to bring rent prices down, we could ensure that everyone, wherever they’re from, could access a house. Is it really as simple as ‘hey let’s build a load of gaffs?’ Well, it would certainly help. There are obvious infrastructure questions to be asked. We can’t have loads of terrible Celtic Tiger estates being built by private developers with no basic amenities nearby. We don’t want a return to ghost estates. The holdup isn’t to do with whether it’s theoretically a good idea to build houses or not, the holdup is ideological.

Establishment politicians like to assert that they’re ideologically neutral, as if there’s any such thing. There is no neutral for any of us. If you and your mates are landlords rather than tenants, then you’re on one side of a massively assymetric divide, let’s call it a class divide. Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil have given the reins almost entirely to private developers to build Ireland’s housing stock. This is a hallmark of neoliberalism, the idea that the ‘free-market’ will provide, and it does provide, but only for those with the prerequisite capital. Private developments, often on public land, are sold to the highest bidder or sold in bulk to gigantic corporate landlords called REITs (real-estate investment trusts) who only pay 10% tax. These REITs are vampiric and they’re the only foreigners that need to be deported.

Where private developers seem to have free reign to throw up hotels, student accomodation and unaffordable housing, Local Councils, City Councils and Approved Housing Bodies have to jump through a labrinthine web of regulations and planning stages to even have their housing development plans approved. These planning procedures take a minimum of five years before the first bit of ground is broken and can be dismissed at any point. They are prohibitive to the point of hilarity and seem to exist in a departmental black box.

So why do I say that the protesters at Mulhuddart are misguided? Their concerns about housing provision are valid. We need more social housing. We need to widen vastly the income thresholds required to even get on the list. The problem, however, is not immigrants taking houses. It was never immigrants and it never will be immigrants. The problem isn’t really the fault of a lethargic building programme by local councils. The problem rests solely here with the State and their neoliberal ideology. Their free market exceptionalism that places more value in the financial potential of a house than in the social value of a home has been our undoing and will continue to be as long as they hold power.

Direct your frustration at the powers that be, not at those who have no power. If we’re going to look after our own first let that mean all people without capital, without power, without the requisite class background. Let’s reclaim from the racists what it means to look after our own, meaning all of us, those in Direct Provision who sought refuge here, and everyone who lives on this island. If looking after our own first means excluding people, let’s exclude foreign multinationals, REITs and profitmongers.

Tl;dr Build gaffs. Public houses on public land.

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