Housing activists poster dozens of derelict Cork sites in advance of protest 

Community Action Tenants Union believes many of them are owned by wealthy people waiting for property values to go up

An apparently vacant property on Marlboro St, Cork. Activists have placed posters on dozens of such buildings in Cork with a QR code leading to  an online petition letter to Cork City Council. Picture: Dan Lienhan

Housing activists have postered dozens of vacant and derelict sites and buildings across Cork city to highlight the problem ahead of a ‘walking festival of dereliction’.

Scanning a QR code on the posters takes you to an open letter to Cork City Council calling for new and urgent measures to end dereliction and for the construction of more public housing.

The campaign is the work of the Community Action Tenants Union (CATAU) — a group set up to represent communities and tenants, including renters, council tenants, mortgage holders and people in emergency and precarious living situations.

'Festival of dereliction' planned

The group’s Cork members are also planning a ‘walking festival of dereliction’ later this month, in association with urban designers Jude Sherry and Frank O'Connor, featuring some of the vacant and derelict properties they have featured in a long-running Twitter thread which has helped shine a spotlight on the issue of dereliction and how to tackle it. 

CATU spokesman in Cork, Ruadh MacCárthaigh, said the poster blitz and ‘walking festival of dereliction’ is part-protest, part-educational.

“We believe that many of the vacant properties are owned by wealthy people who can afford to sit on them, and who are waiting for property values to go up,” he said.

'Use it or lose it' tax proposed

CATU has called for a punitive vacant property tax, to force property owners to “use it or lose it”, and for state intervention in the form of Compulsory Purchase Orders (CPO), for those who don’t.

“We think council could CPO these properties and convert them into public housing, and use the vacant property tax to fund those CPOs.” 

He was speaking as the National Homeless and Housing Coalition (NHHC) held a protest in Cork city today calling for an end to the housing crisis.

The NHHC is supported by Sinn Féin, People Before Profit, Solidarity, Travellers of North Cork, and CATU Cork.

The NHHC said rents and house prices in Cork are continually increasing.

Government 'working for private interests'

“So many of my friends are being priced out, evicted, or facing homelessness,” NHHC member, Gary Baus said. "A demonstration of people power on the streets is the only way the Government will stop working for private interests and listen."

A vacant site at Kyrl's Quay in Cork City which has been postered by housing activists. Picture: Denis Minihane

The group said they believed that the Government’s Housing for All plan, launched last week by Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien, stands to “change nothing” for the so-called generation rent, who find themselves trapped in difficulty with rental and saving for deposits and mortgages.

They said the new plan “retreads the ground covered in Rebuilding Ireland and other failed housing announcements” and will maintain a housing status quo built on vulture funds and declining accommodation standards, while failing to deliver local authority builds and cost-rental housing at a scale needed to either address current housing, homelessness, and the direct provision crises, or the challenges posed in the future by a growing population.