As the housing crisis in the country is worsening, many houses and buildings in Cork city are vacant and the owners are waiting for a further surge in property price to sell them off, allege housing activists.
The Community Action Tenants Union (CATU), an organization works for the welfare of tenants and mortgage holders has postered many vacant buildings in Cork city as a protest in the wake of the issue, the Irish Examiner reports. If scanned, the QR code on the posters takes you to a web page where a letter calling the Cork City Council to take urgent measures to end dereliction and for the construction of more public housing.
According to CATU, many of these vacant houses are owned by rich people and they are waiting the property price to increase further more to sell them off. The CATU also demands the City Council to introduce a vacant property tax for such houses while a lot of people are suffering in the country without a roof on their top. They are also calling state intervention in the form of Compulsory Purchase Orders (CPO) for buildings those don’t pay vacant tax. The organization has shared photos of vacant houses on their Twitter page too.
By the end of the month, the activists are planning a protest called ‘walking festival of dereliction’ to bring the issue in public.
“We believe that many of the vacant properties are owned by wealthy people who can afford to sit on them, and who are waiting for property values to go up,” CATU spokesman in Cork, Ruadh MacCárthaigh said.
“We think council could CPO these properties and convert them into public housing, and use the vacant property tax to fund those CPOs.” he added further.