Cork haunted by housing crisis this Halloween

While halloween night saw scores of young people dressed up as all sorts of scary creatures and ghosts, a ghost of a different kind was haunting Cork City.


A ghost or two was floating around Beechtree Avenue in Shanakiel in the Northside of the city earlier on that day as Ógra Shinn Féin activists highlighting the growing housing crisis in the City.

A motion submitted to the City manager the previous thursday indicated that there were 8081 people on the housing list for the city area alone.

Ógra spokesperson Aodhán Ó Brollacháin had this to say ''The spectre of the housing crisis hangs over cork city. There are some 8081 people on the housing list, many of them waiting for many many years for a house. And yet there are many houses in partially filled estates such as and in ghost estates around Cork City and county which could be used to house people.
Even if no one else joined the housing list at this point, it would take 12 years to fill it.

This would be bad enough on its own, but is downright scandalous when one considers the 300,000+ empty houses in the state. The housing crisis could be solved if there was the political will to do so.

Sinn Féin and Ógra Shinn Féin have been active in this regard over recent months, organising public meetings in Togher, the Glen, Mahon, and more to come in other neighbourhoods. We have also produced our policy document ending the wait, which brings forward simple proposals to solve the crisis in Cork, and to improve the lot of local authority tenants generally.'

He concluded 'We intend to further develop the campaign and to put pressure on the city to act. The crisis has reached tipping point - it's time to act.