Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

In late 2017 the Leeside apartments on Bachelors Quay in Cork were bought by the vulture fund, Lugus Capital. Notices to quit were issued immediately to all residents in the 78-apartment complex. Lugus Capital's plan was to evict, renovate and charge much higher rents. When the residents approached me, we set up a residents' group and decided to campaign against the evictions. The majority of residents who were Erasmus students went home at Christmas. The remainder who were unable to find alternative accommodation in a housing crisis had no alternative but to campaign and fight. They brought the vulture fund to the Residential Tenancies Board to force it to issue new notices to quit. They organised a series of protests outside the apartments. They also organised a march through the city which was attended by more than 300 people. They went on radio and television and to the newspapers, scandalised their landlord and made it absolutely clear that they were not for moving.

Last summer Lugus Capital sued for peace. It offered to keep the residents in apartments if they agreed to switch apartments within the complex, pay higher rents under the HAP scheme and sign a non-disclosure agreement. Cork City Council agreed to the HAP option and, so to speak, the deal was done. I cannot say exactly when, but at some stage Lugus Capital decided to sell up. Having 14 HAP scheme tenants in its new luxury apartments was never part of the plan. Last month the Clúid Housing Association bought the apartments from Lugus Capital for €20 million. The 14 families get to keep a roof over their heads, the HAP scheme tenants will be allowed back into the original apartments, while more than this, 59 households are being taken off the Cork City Council housing waiting list and given new homes at Leeside.

This victory is a testament both to the Leeside residents who fought the evictions and my colleague Councillor Fiona Ryan who advised and worked alongside them every step of the way. With more than 10,000 officially homeless, the Leeside saga is rich in lessons and offers pointers on how the housing crisis might be tackled. Lesson No. 1 is that evictions can be fought and defeated, even when the landlord is a powerful vulture fund. An important pointer is that the key to saving homes and creating new one was taking the building out of private ownership. I prefer a model where the council directly takes control. I prefer a model where vulture fund landlords have their properties seized, rather than receiving lavish compensation. Nevertheless, there is a strong lesson, that is, that ending private ownership can save and create homes. The victory should provide inspiration for every tenant nationwide who is fighting eviction. It should not be a one-off. It should provide a strong element of a template for how the State should intervene in similar cases in the future. Last but not least, the Government should stop kowtowing to the landlord lobby and match the courage of the victorious residents by moving to ban all evictions into homelessness.

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