Campaign to highlight vacant and derelict housing in Limerick
A CAMPAIGN will run throughout February to highlight the scale of vacant and derelict homes across Limerick.
Codenamed 28 Days of Dereliction, the People Before Profit party will highlight an out-of-use unit every day until February 26.
Then, there will be a day of action planned with other members of the National Housing and Homeless coalition.
The campaign has been launched following the release of the housing for all quarterly report last week describing the actions that are to be implemented to tackle the housing crisis. The government’s plan intends to deliver 33,000 homes on average each year over the next decade and increase employment in the construction sector by 53,000.
People Before Profit spokesperson and former councillor Cian Prendiville said: "While there is now a suite of tools that exist to start tackling vacancy and dereliction it is clear that these tools don't go far enough or have enough ambition for tackling the homelessness crisis. There are over 100,000 vacant homes in the state but the suite of measures implemented under Housing for All aims to buy up and resell only 2,500 of these by 2026."
"People Before Profit have highlighted in their housing policy the necessary changes to quickly tackle the vacancy and dereliction. Some of these changes include giving owners 6 months to bring vacant properties back into use before they would face a levy at the rate of local rents for similar properties and after one year have the property taken into public ownership. Investment properties left empty or underused for more than six months should be subject to an annual tax of 20% of the value of the property, to discourage the current behaviour of large institutional landlords who leave properties empty to keep rental prices high," he added.