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Long term empty houses highlighted in Kildare
Date: Sun, 2018-09-30 13:50
As part of the Take Back the City National Day of Action, housing activists with Housing Action Kildare had a banner and leaflet drop in Newbridge on Sept 22nd, centred around a 4 bedroom house that has been empty for up to 7 years and is owned by a bank.
The house is located in the Standhouse Rise housing estate in Newbridge and a yellow poster now marks it as house that is lying empty during a time of desperate housing need. This kind of artificial scarcity, enabled by State inaction, driven by property price speculation and enforced by police violence, is completely unnecessary.
Local residents responded positively to the action when organisers leafletted the surrounding houses. One woman joked that she almost called the Gardaí upon seeing a group assembling around the vacant house which she said has been empty for years and has been broken into by groups of youths who have done minor damage to inside of the house.
This action is part of a growing housing campaign building in Kildare and nationally that it is hoped will grow to such a strength that it can force the State to commit to building public housing which is the only real option to solving the housing crisis.