The Housing Crisis Is Manufactured At The Top - Refugees Aren’t To Blame

All over Ireland hundreds of people sleep out to raise money for the housing charity ‘Focus Ireland’. To fund their services, housing charities often seek out private donations from ‘business leaders’ and ‘corporations’.

But bosses and corporations are often the very same entities that exacerbate homelessness in the first place, through poverty wages, hoarding property, and dodging tax. Bosses, owners, and CEOs may be sleeping out tonight for one night only. Perhaps that’s all they need to ease their conscience about why some people sleep out their whole lives.

We have to realize that despite the admirable work that charities perform, they’re only a bandage on a wound, but it’s the government that’s continually stabbing us. What if we eliminated the root cause of the problem, instead of exhausting ourselves in treating the symptoms?

No amount of charity can alleviate the violence of the state that is homelessness and the housing crisis. And that is why we have decided to sleep out here, at this crucial doorstep. Because this is the doorstep of the perpetrators of the housing crisis. And the people who work inside this building should never be allowed to sleep soundly until everyone sleeps soundly. Let me tell you exactly why:

After government cutbacks resulted in the closure of a halfway house on Coburg street Cork, a young man of eighteen entered homelessness for the first time. He slept out in a nearby alley. Vulnerable and confused, within just two weeks, heroin addiction had taken hold of him. It doesn’t take long before the unimaginable fear and loneliness experienced by living on the streets leads to the complete emotional wreckage of your soul. You’d do anything to make the pain stop.

But without a safe space, without the dignity that is granted to others and that for whatever reason is denied to you, you seek out a relief from your pain. And that pain-relief leads to addiction and often death.

The emotional, psychological, and physical pain and trauma of homelessness lasts a lifetime. That is of course if you manage to survive. Many of us in Cork remember our comrade Declan from Waterford. After he received an eviction notice, he decided to take his own life. In his suicide note he begged the council to look after his partner and young child. He begged them not to make them homeless. He begged them for social housing.

Many of us also remember Alina.

With a young son and pregnant with twins she was forced to live in the most deplorable conditions that we as CATU members had ever seen. Raw sewage dripped down the walls into her kitchen from the flat above, the ceiling had collapsed in the bathroom, mold was everywhere. Her prolonged pleas for help to her landlord went unanswered.

Her landlord did nothing, while hundreds of euros of HAP payments from the City Council would fill up his bank account every month. When we provided evidence to the council that her life was in imminent danger we were met with uncaring callousness by the housing department. It was only after we implored the fire department to intervene and inspect the property did they immediately condemn the building as unsafe. This resulted in her receiving temporary accommodation within a few hours afterwards.

There are stories after stories. So how could anyone in their right mind, anyone who truly understands the suffering of the crisis, ever think that the solution is to burn people out of their tents, to harass people who live in temporary accommodation or dilapidated modular homes? But this is what the Far Right are doing. They are attacking the most vulnerable sector of society, homeless people that have fled persecution, war, and famine from other countries.

On Sandwith street in Dublin, the Garda willfully turned their backs as well as a blind eye, to allow a fascist mob to burn down the tents of homeless refugees. During the Dublin riots last November, the far right activist Gavin Pepper went online and said, “7 o’clock. Be in town. Everyone bally up, tool up. And any fucking foreigner, anyone, just kill them. Just fucking kill them.” Gavin Pepper is now an elected councillor of Dublin City Council.

As you can see we can’t beat the rise of fascism by ignoring it. We can’t beat it with thoughts, prayers, or positive thinking. We can’t beat it with calls for more policing. There have been 31 arson attacks against the most vulnerable people in our society so far. 31 ‘Kristallnachts’, and I still don’t think the Irish people have realized that the only way to beat it is through organized people power on the streets.

‘Workers of the world unite’. It isn’t just a catchy phrase. It’s an imperative. It’s the only way we can achieve a power stronger than the landlords, developers, vulture funds, and the government bureaucrats that serve them. The power of global capital is international. So must be our resistance. The victims of the housing crisis and the victims of war, famine, and oppression must stay united.

Only with a united front of all who suffer housing insecurity and homelessness can we win. The workers of the world united is the only way we can overthrow a system that exclusively serves a parasitic ruling class. Two Irish billionaires now control more wealth than the entire bottom 50% of the Irish population.

Just think for a moment, if you’re struggling to find housing, and a foreigner is also struggling to find housing, don’t both of you have more in common with each other than with the one who owns ten houses and hoards property for profit?

Doesn’t it make sense to join forces and work together? Irish people, side by side with migrants, and refugees, fighting for our human right to housing. Our loyalties should never be bound by national borders, confined by language or culture. My loyalty is to my class, not to the colour of my skin. We all owe our allegiance to the human race.

Never forget our history. Never forget that colonized Ireland was a racist apartheid state. They planted the seeds of hatred, division, and inequality. But the solution to that is not a rotten racist ethnostate. The solution is to uproot those evil seeds and build a republic with equal rights for all. That’s what a republic means, that’s what the real Irish struggle is about. The realization that national independence means nothing without the economic liberation of all.

So who are ‘our own’ that the Far Right speak of so often? Because from the foundation of the State, long before any migration to Ireland, the system was rigged against the working class. The rich get rich by exploiting the poor. Are the rich ‘our own’? I don’t think so. And what have the Far Right accomplished by travelling all over the country attacking migrants? Did their movement house anyone?

Did it create more frontline hospital staff? Did it increase your wages? No, they’ve accomplished nothing. All they know how to do is blame foreigners for the economic suffering of a country. It’s the oldest trick in the history book. It’s what cowards and bullies do, because abusing the powerless is easy - fighting the powerful is not.

They also don’t understand that the poverty and scarcity we experience is by design. FF/FG have restricted supply of public and affordable housing for 15 years. They went across the world inviting vulture funds and corporate landlords to Ireland. And they did that to drive up house prices, rents, and landlord profits. The housing crisis is the direct result of government policy that creates massive wealth for the already wealthy and untold misery for us.

Why has the Cork City Council failed to meet its public housing targets year after year? Why have they failed to renovate hundreds of their existing public housing stock? Why did the government refuse to spend over €1 billion of its own housing budget throughout the last three years. And when they released Budget 2025, did anyone notice that they didn’t mention homelessness? They didn’t refer to it at all. It’s shocking and it’s infuriating they didn’t mention it even once.

Because the current magnitude of the housing crisis is unprecedented in the history of the state. Frustratingly, at the same time, the solutions are staring us in the face. Put in real rent controls. Reinstate the eviction ban, keep people in their homes. Build public housing on public land with a state funded construction company, build houses at cost price, not to maximize profit for private developers.

Purchase all of the 166,000 vacant homes in Ireland, renovate them, house the homeless and everyone on the housing list. The government now has over €25 billion of surplus reserves in a rainy day fund. I’m telling you that the rainy day is now. It’s pouring. It’s an emergency. We’ve over 14,500 homeless, 4,000 children.

Ultimately, we need to put public need over private greed.

We need housing for the people, not a housing market for the rich. And at the end of the day we all want the same thing. We all want to live a decent life. The capitalist system and the fascists want us to compete for resources, but we shouldn’t have to. Clearly there’s enough for everyone in need and we can share it fairly, but we have to fight to get it all - and that takes unity. So say yes to unity. Say yes, if you want a land of a thousand million welcomes.

Say yes, if you feel everyone deserves a dignified life. Say yes, if you see we share more similarities than differences. Say yes, if you know protecting the powerless means fighting the powerful. Say yes, if you believe democracy is best practiced in our streets, in our workplace, and in our community.

I’d like to finish with the words of our friend singer Jimi Cullen, from his song ‘Homes For All’:

You know it’s not a competition To see who needs it more It’s called divide and conquer You pit the poor against the poor

It’s a manufactured hatred That comes straight from the top To keep us all distracted To try to cover up the rot

Because they’re the ones who made the housing crises…

It wasn’t Migrants and it was not Refugees And every time we punch down on each other We fuel their neo-liberal machine

But together we will always be much stronger A truly united working class And in a country with so many empty houses We need to come together to demand…

Homes for all Yes everyone! From those living on our streets To those fleeing from the bombs Homes for all Yes, me and you! We need homes for the many not just the few

So it’s not a competition It never really was Despite the lies the far-right spew To string people along

To manufacture hatred And make sure that it spreads To do our leaders dirty work As they poison peoples heads

They scream they’re the ones who made the housing crisis
At Foreigners, Migrants and Refugees And every time they call to house our own first There’s one thing they completely fail to see

That together we will always be much stronger A truly united working class And in a country with so many empty houses It’s time to come together to demand…

Homes for all Yes everyone! From those living on our streets To those fleeing from the bombs Homes for all Yes, me and you! We need homes for the many not just the few

That’s why it’s not a competition It never had to be To pit one side against the other There never was a need

We’ve enough to help those fleeing wars As well as those living on our streets Because the problem isn’t shortage The problem lies with greed

Homes for all Yes everyone! From those living on our streets To those fleeing from the bombs Homes for all Yes, me and you! We need homes for the many not just the few