Award-winning architect Duncan Stewart is urging people to attend a public meeting tonight tackling the housing crisis.
Labour's Ivana Bacik and Mr Stewart will speak out tonight against the current government's response to the housing crisis. The event forms part of Labour's ongoing vacancy and dereliction campaign.
Deputy Bacik said ahead of tonight's meeting: "“If there’s been a consistent theme as to how Fianna Fail have managed the Housing Department in recent years it’s this: focusing on sorting out the developers; concerning themselves with tax breaks for landlords; ignoring the growing systemic problem of homelessness; actively ignoring the huge numbers of empty homes nationwide."
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The politician described the ongoing crisis as a "national scandal". She urged people to add their names to the Labour Party register to address the housing shortage.
Meanwhile, Mr Stewart called for the current register on vacant housing to undergo a major upgrade. He also argued that owners of unoccupied properties should be slapped with a vacancy tax.
He said: "Policies clearly need to be legislated to ensure all these buildings, now in a poor state of repair, be urgently refurbished to acceptable standards and made habitable and fit for purpose for residential use. By converting, upgrading and releasing all this massive amount of vacant property, it could go a long way towards solving our housing shortage, while it could greatly help reduce house prices and rents. Surely this is a no brainer!”
An estimated 5,000 homes currently lie vacant in the Dublin area. The meeting takes place tonight in Rathmines Town Hall at 7pm.
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