Why Local Elections Matter: Housing. Elect People Who Will Stop Corporate Vulture Funds

national | politics / elections | feature Thursday May 23, 2019 22:18 by 1 of indy

Case Study: Dundrum - Sandyford Area.

These local elections on Fri 24th May are more important than ever. The reason is that up and down the country Fine Gael with help from Fianna Fail have allowed corporate vulture funds through various government breaks to them to buy up valuable tracts of land and to buy up thousands and thousands of apartments and homes. And the result is they are screwing people for rent. In this feature a case study for South Dublin of how they corporate takeover has occurred and driven prices sky high and priced out ordinary people from ever buying a house or apartment. Found out what is happening in your council area and how FG and FF councillors encourage this madness because it is happening in towns and cities all over the country.

On councils up and down the country, FG and FF councillors in coherts with FG government policy to hand over valuable assets to corporate vulture funds at knock down prices -have allowed this situation to occur all in the name of solving the housing problem. The result is the housing crisis is worse than ever, homelessness is at all time high and young people are being forced to buy houses in towns way beyond Dublin forcing them into long commutes, contributing to our greenhouse emissions, long hours and stressful lifestyles. Many young people now see no hope of ever affording a home and while they are paying huge rents it prevents them from saving any money for a deposit. And house prices themselves are sky high, driving up costs for employers and employess alike.

This is all thanks to FG and FF and it has to stop and must be reversed. If people have any sense they must not vote in any FF or FG candidates or any Independent candidates who are pseudo FF or FG candidates.

To illustrate this crisis the excellent work done by Brian Lesson, Eirigi in the Dundrum Sandyford area to highlight the corporate take-over in that area is described below. People Before Profit have also been active in the area too high-lighting the corporate takeover in the area including pointing out the reluctance of the council to give go-ahead for building social housing on public land in Cherrywood. This is because the councillors want to keep prices high for a private development nearby and having cheaper public housing built at the same time would take away the imperative for people to rent at absurd prices in corporate owned apartments.

Housing Fact #1: One in sixteen homes in Rathdown (of Dun Laoghaire Rathdown Council) is owned by a private corporation

Housing Fact #2: The Dundrum Local Electoral Area is the second most expensive place to rent a home in the state

In 2013 no homes in the Rathdown constituency were owned by large corporatioms. Now they own 2,200. Over the same five year period rent across South Dublin area rose by a staggering 70% (based on Daft.ie Rent Reports)

The government claim that corporate-owned Build To Rent housing is part of the solution to the housing crisis but the experience in our community tells a very different story.

In reality, the corporations operate a very aggressive pricing strategy, consistently pushing their rents higher and higher. Traditional landlords then follow suite and also increase their rents.

This aggressive pricing was seen again in February 2019 when the corporation that owns the Fernbank apartments at Notre Dame in Churchtown revealed that it would cost an extortiionate &uero;3,200 per month to rent a three-bed apartment, €2,350 for a two bed and €1,950 for a one-bed.

This is FG and FF policy. To aid and encourage the corporate takeover so that they can screw the population. This is a modern form of British landlords of previous centuries. Do NOT vote these people in again!