Una Mullally: Huge housing protests will follow end of pandemic

A new housing movement will be the dominant force in Irish politics and culture. It will define the next stage of Ireland’s social revolution, which is ongoing, and rooted in the demands and standards of a population miles ahead of the panicking inept Coalition and regressive mentalities of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, which created both the property crash and the contemporary housing crisis.

We have been here before, but repetition, consciousness raising and things that look like false starts and sporadic action, are actually points on a continuous arc, are the qualities of long-term activism that doesn’t “work” until it does. In 2018 and 2019 mass housing protests took place in Ireland. It looked, for a while, that a new movement was coalescing on housing as the latest “issue”, in the aftermath of the Repeal the Eighth and marriage equality movements, which changed the Constitution, had knock-on global affects and trained and politicised tens of thousands of people in protest, canvassing, direct action and organising.

I'm sure the Government thinks that the sooner the pandemic is "over", the sooner they'll get their own vaccine bonus in the polls

In December 2016 activists occupied Apollo House in Dublin city and transformed the building into a homeless shelter. The Home Sweet Home collective used direct action to highlight the homelessness crisis and demonstrated an obvious approach – give people shelter. In early August 2018, a small group of activists occupied 38 Summerhill Parade and then 34 North Frederick Street in Dublin, when dozens of tenants were evicted from the former, and heavies arrived to throw out the activists who had occupied the latter.

Those involved in Take Back the City came from all sorts of backgrounds, and were a catalyst for the mass protests that took place in October 2018 and May 2019, collectively known as the Raise the Roof protests. None of these actions was perfect, none of them went the distance, but that doesn’t matter. When the inevitable left-wing coalition government is in power – sooner or later – we will be able to trace back its electoral success back to previous governments exacerbating the housing crisis through their own bad policies, and to the small numbers of people who refused to be bystanders in a crisis.

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Good start

One of those involved in the Summerhill occupation is now a TD, the Green Party’s Neasa Hourigan. At the time, Hourigan was quoted in a report in the Journal, and spoke about doing night shifts at one of the occupations. “This is a piece of activism,” she said. “This is a piece of passive resistance. That’s what it’s about. It is about raising awareness until the law changes.” There is nothing like ending up in government to soften the cough, but what Hourigan identified in taking action is very pertinent. The public may not have all the answers listed in a nifty set of demands, but they do know something is wrong, and they will bring their discontent out on to the streets, and that’s a start. In activism the changes that occur to individuals throughout the process, the ideas that are shared and the energy that is created are as important as any “outcome” or “win”.

I’m sure the Government thinks that the sooner the pandemic is “over”, the sooner they’ll get their own vaccine bonus in the polls. That may happen in the short term, but it will be a blip. In fact, the sooner this is “over”, the sooner the protests will begin. When people can gather in large numbers safely, and when social distancing is dispensed with, we are going to see housing protests on the scale of the water charges movement.

The new housing movement should take its cues from the feminist and LGBT+ rights movements, which have steered social change in Ireland

The student movement will be key to the broader housing movement. The student housing crisis preceded the broader housing crisis, as over the past decade, every August and September, student union officials repeatedly raised issues of affordability, a lack of supply and the pseudo-homelessness many students were experiencing, couch-surfing or stuck in a limbo of remaining in their family homes while enduring long commutes to colleges and universities. Had those students been listened to, and their needs met, we may not have ended up where we are now. They were sounding alarms about a crisis and were not listened to.

Stalled momentum

Looking back on the actions and protests between late 2016 and mid 2019, one wonders why the momentum stalled. Exasperation, a lack of tangible goals, burnout, and the multifaceted nature of the crisis all contributed to a feeling that it was almost too big to tackle.

The new housing movement should take its cues from the feminist and LGBT+ rights movements, which have steered social change in Ireland, along with Ireland’s growing anti-racist movements, where non-hierarchical, grass-roots and DIY organising, creativity, direct action and empowering people to engage in the kind of activism that suits them, rather than telling people what to do or what not to do, effects change, no matter how much such an approach is denigrated, patronised, or told “you’re doing things wrong”. Occupations, squatting, and street protests that shut down cities are all valid tactics. Where the political and media sphere will look for leaders, manifestos and demands, a movement rooted in diverse people power will operate in a way yet to be imagined. Its “success” will be in the process that unfolds.