Housing Shock

Abstract

The unprecedented housing and homelessness crisis in Ireland is having profound impacts on Generation Rent, the wellbeing of children, worsening wider inequality and threatening the economy. Housing Shock contextualises the Irish housing crisis within the broader global housing situation by examining the origins of the crisis in terms of austerity, marketisation and the new era of financialisation, where global investors are making housing unaffordable and turning homes into assets for the wealthy. The COVID-19 pandemic has also shown the central importance of secure, affordable, decent standard homes and housing and this book details the structural problems and inequalities that COVID has exposed. It also brings to the fore the perspectives of those most affected by the crisis, new housing activists and protesters whilst providing innovative global solutions for a new vision for affordable, sustainable homes for all including “a green new deal for housing that provides affordable sustainable homes and communities for all”, a new form of public housing and putting the right to adequate, affordable, secure housing in the constitution and law. And it points to hopeful aspects in the new civil society housing protest movements in Ireland. It also details the contribution that academics and policy makers can make in social change in housing. This book shows how housing is fundamental to our wellbeing and a housing system that ensures everyone has an affordable secure home is beneficial for all and that achieving this is a political and societal choice.