By Michael O’Brien
Dublin City Council senior officials have announced their intention to significantly increase rents for tenants in the some 26,000 units across the city still in council ownership.
Increasing the differential rent from 15% to 18% of the primary tenant and almost doubling the rent of all subsidiary earning tenants from €21 to €40 per week will see among the poorest increases upwards of 50%! Also affected are those on the public housing waiting lists who, because of the low-income eligibility thresholds, are as poor as many council tenants. If they get away with it in Dublin City Council, other councils will surely follow.
A massive hike
Some of the mainstream coverage of this announcement lays a heavy emphasis on how council rents are far below the market average and will remain so even if these hikes are implemented. Clearly, this slant is intended to undermine opposition to the threatened increases and excite negative feelings towards council tenants among those in private rented accommodation.
This is turning reality on its head. It is the absence of rent controls in the private sector and people being forced into that sector via HAP and effectively being used as a conduit to enrich landlords that needs to be challenged.
The main justification for this massive hike being offered by officials is a €55.5 million deficit in the maintenance budget. The need for maintenance in council dwellings is great, with most existing stock more than 50 years old and poorly insulated, which means tenants have to spend above average on heating. The steep increase in fuel and food prices demonstrates that opposition to rent increases is absolutely genuine and should be supported by all working class people. The gaps should be plugged by central government.
Mobilise and organise
A campaign has been initiated called Council Tenants Against Rent Hikes, which has called a protest outside City Hall at 6pm, 1 December, at the next monthly meeting of the councillors. It is unclear at the time of writing whether or not the councillors will be granted a vote on this. Voting on the council budget is one of few significant remaining powers held by councillors so they should absolutely insist on a vote and going on then to strike down this regressive proposal.
Focussed pressure on the councillors will be needed. Among many of the councillors and parties who purport to be left, there is a bad tradition of pragmatically accepting the budgetary parameters laid down by the officials. This tradition needs to be broken.
This issue highlights a broader need for rents, in both the public and private sector, to be slashed to levels that are actually affordable, linked with a no-fault ban on evictions in the latter. Critically, we need the building of properly insulated public housing and for existing stock to be retrofitted, built by a state-owned construction company. The establishment wants to normalise this crisis—this is something we cannot accept and must urgently fight now.
