Housing in the North: A Crisis Resurfacing

A manufactured housing crisis has gripped Ireland in recent decades and is one of the most pressing issues facing the working class of Ireland. Most of the attention has been focused on the south where the crisis has been most acute, but the 6 counties are on the same trajectory, driven by the same neoliberal policies with rapidly growing homelessness, growing waiting lists for social housing, rents spiralling out of control and rampant housing insecurity.

Homelessness in the north has more than doubled over the past decade. The latest housing bulletin published by the Department for Communities in March 2025 reported that 31,719 households (not people) were registered as homeless, a 132% increase over 13,644 in 2015. This figure does not account for those suffering from “hidden homelessness” who are not recorded on official statistics. A 2024 report from the Simon Community estimated there to be 8,500 households falling into this category, which they considered to be a conservative estimate given the lack of data. In total, over 40,000 households can be considered homeless at minimum.

Despite this, tens of thousands of homes lie vacant, creating an artificial scarcity, while thousands of council houses have been privately sold off under Right to Buy schemes.

To tackle the growing crisis, the 6 county executive’s programme for government nominally committed to building 5,850 new social homes by 2027. Due to budget cuts, the actual number of homes being built is already falling far short of the target, with only 1,000 set to be built this year. Another £62 million is needed for it to hit the original target; the British government is eager to spend over £1 billion per year to maintain its colonial apparatus through Operation Helvetic, however.

All sorts of schemes such as the Local Housing Allowance are indirectly subsidising private landlords rather than tackling the root of the problem and spending money on the construction of social housing.

This crisis did not appear out of nowhere; rather, it is the result of conscious decisions by a neoliberal government and is endemic to our wider social system. It is intrinsic to the capitalist mode of production which has turned housing into a commodity and allowed the free market to be responsible for adequate housing, fostering a parasite class of landlords. The housing sector is dominated by private companies and landlords who buy up properties to be let at exorbitant rents.

Neoliberalism and the corresponding erosion of the welfare state is capitalism’s natural response to the falling rate of profit. The housing crisis is increasingly exploited by far-right thugs who, in a desperate struggle against this reduction in their living standards, use immigrants as a scapegoat to obscure the contradictions of capitalism in crisis and carry out pogroms against refugees. In reality, this is a class issue and will be resolved through class struggle alone in order to supplant our antiquated economic system with socialism.

When we consider the composition of Stormont and the typical bourgeois parties, it becomes clear why these policies are being pursued. The register of interests shows that a quarter of MLAs are landlords, and there have been countless scandals involving MLAs who have evaded registering their properties. The exact same thing occurs at a council level – SDLP councillor Declan Boyle was discovered to own over 30 undeclared properties in Belfast’s Holylands area, preying on young students forced to live in his slum housing.

While it is well-known that the partitionists Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil are parties of landlords, one of the chief collaborators with British imperialism in the 6 counties, Sinn Féin, unsurprisingly have a vested interest in landlordism also, with quite a number of TDs and MLAs being registered landlords, despite their faux radicalism over housing issues.

Housing issues in the north are intensified by sectarianism with widespread segregation between Catholic and Protestant communities. Many streets in Belfast are physically divided by so-called “peace walls”, while Derry is split not only geographically but demographically by the River Foyle. Many areas are deemed unsafe for certain members of the community to be in, and school children are taught from a young age to be extremely cautious about which street they walk into while wearing their school uniform. Loyalist paramilitaries often violently intimidate Catholics or ethnic minorities, and it is no wonder why the most recent pogroms have originated in loyalist strongholds.

Community Action Tenants Union (CATU) has been building a militant, all-Ireland campaign to challenge the power of landlords by organising tenants in their community and campaigning for universal public housing. Through the power of organised, direct action it is capable of protecting tenants from predatory landlords and resisting unjust evictions. Branches have already been established in Belfast and Derry, as well as throughout the 26 counties.

What Ireland needs is the elimination of landlordism. Money used to fund warfare or subsidise landlords must be used to fund universal public housing on a large scale, the property of large landlords must be nationalised, and all vacant dwellings must be expropriated and renovated for public housing.

A perpetual housing crisis will exist so long as capitalism exists. As Engels said a century and a half ago:

“It is not that the solution of the housing question simultaneously solves the social question, but that only by the solution of the social question, that is, by the abolition of the capitalist mode of production, is the solution of the housing question made possible.”