Socialist Republicans Target Multiple Landlords Over Excessive Rent
Socialist republicans from the Republican Socialist Action (RSA) group targeted three properties last night over excessive rents in working class areas.
Socialist republicans from the Republican Socialist Action (RSA) group targeted three properties last night over excessive rents in working class areas.
A property in Tallaght for €2,500 monthly, in Crumlin priced at €2,350 and another in Crumlin renting for €2,600 were hit with targeted direct action, warning the landlords to adjust their rents to local social housing rates or “further action will be taken”.
“These properties were selected as a part of our drop the rents campaign as they are the most brazen examples of how out of control the private sector is. These properties are in working class areas, yet demanding rent that is simply unaffordable for the average family, “ they said in a statement to Aontacht Media, adding that “To the landlords, we are telling you to drop your rent to local social housing rates. We will not allow our people to be priced out of the communities they have grown up in”.
The latest RSA actions come amid an upsurge in high profile evictions by landlords employing shadowy private security companies. Thus, it is part of a wider campaign through which socialist republicans are seeking to combat landlordism and force landlords to lower rents, indicating a growing fightback in Irish society against the housing crisis. With landlordism rife in the country, it is up to the working class to fight back.
Landlordism in Ireland is a result not of natural market laws, something inevitable, but it is a conscious policy by those in power. Due to decades of neoliberal social and economic policy perpetrated by this government on the people of Ireland, housing has become both scarce and expensive. Bad living conditions, landlords running amok and setting high rents, an entire system based on the extraction of wealth results in what Engels called social murder, where members of the working class meet premature, unnatural deaths. Homelessness and precarious living situations have become commonplace in Ireland. Recently, the Health Research Board reported that 124 people died while sleeping rough in 2022. The FF/FG government does not represent the will of Ireland - they have sold off the country to foreign capitalist interests, the EU, Brussels and America.
It can thus be said that this is deliberate. Government rhetoric remains the same, that the housing crisis cannot be fixed overnight, while they continue to pursue policies that benefit the rich, the vulture funds and the multinational companies. This is happening because the government is tied by "a thousand threads" to the capitalist class, they too benefit from these policies, as Lenin pointed out. Rather than build universal and affordable public housing, they subsidise the private market to build housing, resulting in failure. The workers’ movement will build a new society, one in which basic human needs such as housing are not commodities, but fundamental rights accessible to all.
