Campaigners call for mass protests against homelessness
The People Before Profit Alliance are calling for a radical campaign to be put together to tackle the housing crisis.
Campaigners are meeting in Dublin this afternoon for the Right2Housing conference to discuss the issue.
Homeless campaigners have branded the Government’s housing policy as "disgraceful", a "failure" and a "fraud".
In October, the Government announced €3.8bn in funding for the Housing Strategy 2020, but 100,000 families still remain on the Local Authority waiting lists.
People Before Profit TD Richard Boyd Barrett said they are now calling for a campaign along the lines of the Right2Water campaign, which would see thousands of people take to the streets to demand housing, rent control, and an end to evictions.
He said: "Our interest is to house people as a matter of right. The money is there, a rationale for doing it is there and it is the only thing that is going to solve the crisis.
"But we are going to need a massive movement of people power to achieve that."
Peter McDonagh, who has been homeless for the last three years, believes such a campaign would definitely work.
Mr McDonagh said: "The Government has to start realising that people aren't going to just accept what we are being forced to live with and that people are not alienating themselves and being pushed into the categories that we are stuck with.
"The homeless actually standing together, it would actually start showing that we are a community in ourselves and that you actually have to deal with the crisis."
